The Girl's a Straight-Up Hustler
by hollyandthediamonds
Summary: Jillian Beckett was a force to be reckoned with. Fearless and outspoken, she took no prisoners when it came to the rumors that were spread about her in the halls. A shameless flirt, she easily seduced half the male population of Meiou High, claiming that she ate boys like Shuichi Minamino for breakfast.
1. Homewrecker

"Is Beckett in here?" Several students shifted in their seats to look for Jillian. Silence was the only reply as Mrs. Akiyama scanned the room for herself.

Jillian Beckett was a very amiable girl when she wanted to be, and she was graced with good aesthetics and a wealthy family.

Many of our classmates, though very jealous of her still held some strange respect for the girl. It was rumored that the faculty only put up with her antics due to the large donations her family frequently gave, and a few of the other students had been annoyed by that. Jillian still seemed to steal their affections with her sense of humor and playfulness, though. They admired her self confidence.

When the girl did show up to class she seemed to be very knowledgeable in most of the subjects. Who knew where she was hiding today. I remembered seeing her on campus before the lunch break ended. She was headed for the stairs.

She was in gym that morning too, her favorite class.

Jillian was a very competitive soul, she needed that hour to burn out whatever was raging inside.

I found her later that afternoon, curled up on the rooftop of the Junior High building. I wasn`t sure if she was all right, but as I stepped closer I realized that she was only napping, her copy of _Pride and Prejudice _under her fingertips. She had fallen asleep reading.

"Jillian," I knelt down and shook her shoulder. She batted her long eyelashes up at me as she awakened, not surprised at all to see me. This was becoming a daily routine for us. I would search the building after class was over so that she wouldn`t be late for her activities.

"Drama starts in five minutes." I stood, and offered her my hand so that I could help her to her feet. She looked up at me with one hand shading her eyes from the sunlight.

"It`s called the _Classy Persons Society of Fine Arts_, Minamino," She chastised me for not calling the organization by the name she had personally given it. Of course, all of the theater and dance students had taken quite a liking to Jillian`s title and it seemed to have stuck.

"Right, well I`ll be in the Scholar`s Room when you`re finished." I turned, taking one last glance at her. She had brushed herself off and was peering over the ledge of the roof, down at the sports teams that had practices outside.

She was a peculiar girl, unreadable, almost. Most of our peers looked to her for advice and strength. They had voted Jillian onto the Student Council but she only attended the meetings when they were completely necessary.

"Sayonara." She uttered. I paused, waiting in the doorway leading to the stairs. She didn`t look as if she were going to attend play practice. I didn`t say anything else, just let the door slam shut behind me. I wouldn`t make myself late trying to make her cooperate.

* * *

**HOME WRECKER**

**You`re a regular decorated emergency.  
The bruises and contusions will remind me what you did when you wake.**

"How was practice?" I approached a somber looking Jillian who had been waiting at the gate to depart. Shiori had agreed to look after Jillian every Monday through Thursday. She looked unimpressed with my façade, knowing all too well that I would ask regardless of knowing whether she went to practice or not.

"I`m not in the mood, Shuichi," She turned, walking a few steps ahead of me.

"I`m sorry you aren`t feeling well. Maybe you should take another nap when we get home." I suggested, sounding innocent enough.

She took it the wrong way, as I had fully expected. Her reactions were complicated. She assumed all kindness that was offered to her was just a hoax. There was no reply, just the sound of her quickened footsteps on the pavement.

"Welcome home!" Mother greeted the two of us upon entering the quiet, suburban home. Jillian greeted her back as she quickly slid off her school shoes.

"Jill, dear," She caught Jillian before the girl could escape to the backyard. Jillian froze. She had a familiar, anxious look in her eyes, and I could feel her nerves going haywire. Shiori was about to deliver some bad news to her about her father`s plans for the evening.

"Your father won`t be home until late tonight, he asked if you could stay here this evening." Jillian tensed at her words, and I saw anger flash across grey irises.

"Jillian doesn`t feel well," Shiori looked down at me with a puzzled expression as I looked to Jillian, trying to send her a silent message that I was going to help her out.

"She would probably be more comfortable at home."

"Do you have a fever?" Shiori asked, stepping away from me and down the hallway towards the now raging girl. Jillian`s eyes were blazing in my direction, both of us knowing that my mother`s concern was too deep for her to just send the girl home with her father. I didn`t fear Jill like our classmates did, though she had the power to wipe out a single student`s self confidence and reputation without lifting a delicately manicured fingertip.

"Go on upstairs and lie down," Shiori smoothed her hair lovingly while smiling, "I`ll bring you some tea."

Disappointed that she couldn`t spend the evening outside until her father returned, Jillian trudged upstairs, making a point to ram her shoulder against my chest as hard as she could as she passed me. She slipped into the bedroom that was at the end of the hallway upstairs. It was the bedroom she often used when her father would force her to spend the night when he was away on business.

Now clearly there was something quite wrong with a twelve year old not being able to spend a few hours at home alone. Jillian was very capable of feeding herself and tucking herself in at night. James Beckett could have been paranoid, however, I had an assortment of suspicions about their family. I watched the door at the end of the hallway for a little while, wondering what the source of all of her anger really was when I heard Shiori making her way up the stairs behind me.

"I made you a snack, dear," She ruffled my hair on her way down the hall, "It`s on the kitchen table." I then watched my mother carry the cup of tea down the hall to the brooding tween.

"Dinner will be ready in about an hour, do you think you`ll be able to eat?" My mother`s kindness was wasted on Jillian. I listened to her response from the other side of the door.

"I don`t think so," She spoke in a monotone, and I knew her big, empty eyes were fixed on something outside the window.

"Please don`t be angry with your father, Jillian," Shiori tried to reason with her. I heard her take a seat on the bed next to Jill,

"He works very hard, and he`s doing the best he can. He even said he would pick you and up from school tomorrow."

She didn`t speak. I felt something swell up inside me, anger. Regardless of the situation at hand, Jillian had no right to disrespect Shiori the way she did on a daily basis. Having had enough, I retreated to my bedroom.

/

The smell was awful. Blood wasn`t bad, and decomposing corpses were hard to stomach but nothing compared to the smell of stomach acid. I pushed myself away from the desk and weighed the options.

I could tell Shiori that Jillian was throwing up her dinners or I could just confront her myself and put up with her brooding alone. The girl was a big enough handful, and vexing Shiori wasn`t worth the emotional distress it would put her through.

She had tried to drown out the sound by turning on the shower, but the smell was too distinct to get past my heightened senses.

She stepped out, wrapped in a towel. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun atop her head, making her look like a Dr. Seuss character. She lifted a carefully shaped eyebrow at me.

"Sorry, didn`t realize there was a wait." Her apology was insincere. She folded her arms across her chest and walked on the balls of her feet when she passed me, trying to quicken her pace.

"Do you purge after every meal you have, or is my mother`s cooking not good enough for you?"

She froze, and looked back at me with her mouth hanging open, eyes wide with disbelief. When she snapped out of the trance, her face twisted into a deep scowl and her slender little fingers wrapped around my arm. I let her drag me down the hall, finding it hard to repress the bemused smile that was spreading from ear to ear.

She slammed the door shut behind us and leaned back against it.

"I swear to _God_ if you tell a _soul_-"

"You`re threatening me?" I asked, turning from her to pace about the room.

"You don`t know the first God damned thing about me, so I don`t expect you to understand. But as long as you keep your mouth shut and stay out of my business, I think I might be able to stomach the thought of you."

I couldn`t help but chuckle at her choice of words, though it seemed to have set her off all over again.

"You`re such a little prick, Minamino. I mean honestly." She stepped over to the vanity, and sat in front of the mirror, giving up on trying to frighten me. She watched me in the reflection as she took her hair out of the tie combed through it. We stayed silent for a moment, just watching each other through the glass.

"What do you want, Shuichi?" She asked, setting her brush down and staring at me intently through the reflection.

I could sense Shiori walking around below us, cleaning up the dinner dishes and making lunches for the both of us to take to school the next day, though there really wasn`t a point if Jillian was just going to force it back up.

"If you`re going to eat the food Shiori prepares, then don`t retch it up. If you don`t want to eat, then don`t."  
"Do you know how hard it is to tell your mother 'no'?" She replied, applying moisturizer to her face. She grabbed a bottle of lotion next.

"Does you father know that you`re bulimic?"

"I am not!" She snapped, getting extremely defensive, "Get out. I`m so sick of your smug ass."

"You can`t hide that forever." I pointed out to her. She walked past me, her eyes narrowed. She swung the door opened and glowered at me, waiting for me to exit.

I shrugged, and carried out the request. She slammed the door shut behind me, and I heard her muttering swears from behind the woodwork.

"Shuichi, is everything alright?" Shiori appeared on the landing of the stairs.

"Yes, mother. Jillian and I were just fooling around for a moment."

"I see," Her eyes were fixed on Jillian`s room at the end of the hall. She put her hands on my shoulder and held me at arms length.

"I`m afraid she`s a very unhappy girl."

I felt myself hold back the urge to scoff in my own mother`s face. I had to remind myself that Shiori was easy to manipulate.

"She`s fine, mother," I tried to reassure her, "Jillian is just a difficult person to read."

"Well maybe you can keep an eye on her for me, dear," She smiled down at me with straight, white teeth, "I`m sure she could use a good friend like you."

Never had a smile been so hard to force in my human life.

/

"Minamino, will you please relay a message to Beckett for me?" I was stopped by the Dean on the way to my locker. I nodded, wondering what sort of trouble she had gotten into this time.

His frown looked out of place. The Dean never seemed to have a problem with Jill, regardless of all of her absences. He seemed nervous, as if he wasn`t sure how to form his thoughts into words. When he finally opened his mouth, he stuttered out,

"Just tell her that… all of us are pullin' for her and that we hope she gets the help that she needs."

I hid the incredulous look that pushed against my pores. Something had happened to Jillian, and it didn`t sound good. Though something was bound to happen, I didn`t think it would occur so soon. I kept my face expressionless,

"Yes, sir."

He nodded once more before taking off down the hall, fidgeting with his hands the whole way. None of the other staff members had said a word about Jillian today, though the mood throughout all of my classes had been extremely sobering the entire day. Whatever happened was trying to be kept a secret.

My steps were slightly hastened as I made my way home that afternoon, wondering if Shiori was panicking. Surely she was going to be pacing all evening regardless of whether Jillian would be alright or not.

Sure enough, her wavering voice called out to me when she heard me walk through the door.

"I`m home, mother," I called back, taking my shoes off. Suddenly, she grabbed me, and held me tightly in her embrace. If I hadn`t had such a high pain tolerance, I might have complained, but I let her crush me in her enfolded arms. She pressed her lips to the top of my head and laid several kisses in my hair.

"Sweetheart," She had been crying, "I have some bad news."

"What`s wrong?" I asked coolly, trying to look up at her. Her eyes had bags under them and they were red rimmed. She looked miserable.

"Jillian hurt herself," She started to tear up again, "She`s in the ICU right now."

"Oh, mother, I`m sure she`ll be alright," I tried to be positive for her, but she shook her head.

"Shuichi, do you know why Jillian would want to hurt herself? Is she having trouble at school with some other kids?" She grasped my shoulders firmly. Trouble at school? Please. Jillian was her own worst enemy, no one else.

"No, Jillian`s rather popular."

"I see," Shiori`s frown deepened and she walked down the hall, her back to me. She was lost in thought. I knew that if I didn`t tell her the truth then, that she wouldn`t be able to stop pondering why Jillian had tried to commit suicide that morning.

"Mother, I have to tell you something." I finally confessed. She looked back at me, very interested. She lead me to the kitchen table and I crossed the floor, trying to decide whether or not it was best to tell her. Her tea had been sitting out, growing cold. She hadn`t touched it.

"What is it?" She asked, pulling the chair out for herself. I looked to the scars covering her arms, scars that Jillian would too bear from that day on.

"Last week I noticed that," I looked up from her arms and into her concerned eyes as I spoke, "Jillian was throwing up after her meals."

"Last week?!" She exclaimed, pushing away from the table. She seemed angered now, betrayed that I had kept such a dangerous secret that was going on in our own home.

"Shuichi, how could you not tell me?" She covered her face with her hands, pushing a few stray hairs out of her face, frustration engulfing her.

"I`m sorry, mother. Jill requested for me to keep it a secret," I tried to explain to her calmly. She only raised her voice,

"If only I`d know, we could have gotten her help before this happened," She gazed off into the distance, her hand cupping her cheek. I had distressed her even more than she had already been. She began to shake her head back and forth. The next thing I knew, the phone had been picked up off the receiver from the wall and she had started stabbing at the buttons. She was calling Jillian`s father.

"James?" I had never seen my mother so distressed. She had always kept a steady temper even in the stickiest situations, though I could see how she would be upset. My human father had commit suicide when I was still very small. I remembered him, he was tall with glasses and dark hair. He and Shiori had been High School sweet hearts.

This was so much more personal than I had realized at first, and I began to regret my callous behavior towards the girl. I couldn`t ignore Shiori`s pain for my deceased father, and I had left her loveless for many years of my life already. I should have known how she would soon realize something was dangerous about Jillian and that she would relate too deeply to her situation.

"Shuichi just told me something about your daughter I think you should know…"

She peered over her shoulder at me, fear in her eyes. I started thinking more about my human father. I could see where my human form had retained some of his genes. His figure was lean and wiry, and we shared the same large, green eyes. When he stood under the light, I remembered seeing a hint of auburn in his hair. He wasn`t completely Japanese. Mother had told me that his family hailed from Ireland.

"He says she`s been throwing up her meals… No, she hasn`t been sick."

When he passed, Shiori fought through her pain. She sacrificed everything she had to give me a good home. She worked constantly, but still found the time to come home after working two jobs and prepare food and do the laundry. I watched with cold eyes as she slaved away to take care of the house, and cry herself to sleep every night.

I was broken from my thoughts when I heard my mother slam the phone back on to the receiver and hiss, enraged.

"That man! I can see how he could be in denial, but honestly…" She trailed, her eyes catching the phonebook on the countertop next to her. She began to rapidly flip through the pages, determined to find a phone number.

"Hello, Counseling Services?"

I`m not entirely sure how it was possible, but Shiori had managed to pull some strings and sign Jillian up for therapy sessions in only a matter of minutes. This time she placed the phone back on the receiver, seeming a lot calmer than she had before.

She looked at me without saying a word, just standing with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall. She didn`t have much of an expression on her face, as I was sure she had been drained by all of the overwhelming emotions that had possessed her all day long.

"Son, you promise me," She finally opened her mouth to speak after a few silent moments,

"That girl is a part of our family. No matter how much she begs you to stay out of her business, the moment you notice something is wrong, you investigate and you come to me. Do you understand?"

I nodded once, swearing my loyalty to her, as if I wasn`t loyal enough already. This single mistake had stung me, and I felt guilt. Not so much for Jillian, but guilt that I had kept something like that from my mother. I had let it hurt her. I let my pride get in the way, and I made a poor judgment call out of my disdain for the feeble girl.

I would have to force myself to care for Jillian if it was going to make Shiori happy.

* * *

**Holly`s notes; **

**Well, there it is, Kurama`s point of view of this situation. If you haven`t read Quintessential State of Dreaming, you may want to if you have`t. This story`s purpose is to give the readers a better understanding of Jillian and Kurama that QSOD doesn`t, as the characters in that story are venturing backwards and watching these specific memories through dreams. **

**Let me know what you think.**


	2. Teen Idle

…I watched Jillian`s frail figure seated in front of me, trembling lightly.

The amount of trauma that purging had on the body tended to throw her off for a little while after. No one seemed to notice, as she still, shakily, kept her composure. I could smell the minty toothpaste from her breath when she greeted me at the beginning of the hour.

Jill was oblivious to the fact that I always knew what she was up to. Every time I would mention something to her she would deny it until I had solid proof of the crime.

There wasn`t much anyone could do. Her father wouldn`t admit her to a hospital, but he would pay to have her teeth whitened. He was too afraid to admit that his daughter was killing herself. James Beckett lived in a make believe world where his daughter was the perfect teen idle that everyone else outside of her private life knew her to be.

As for Shiori and I, we were the only that offered her any comfort and support to make healthier lifestyle choices. In a way, we had both become mother and father to the girl, as it was clear that she hadn`t had either.

I noticed that the cherry red blazer that was part of the Meiou High uniform was missing, and she was left with the her pressed, white button up tucked into her the matching red skirt. Her sleeves were rolled up and buttoned at her elbows, giving her a very casual look.

Arms folded across her chest, tightly gripping the opposite upper arms, she tried to steady herself. The class was too focused on the lecture to notice this extremely out of character body language that she was portraying.

No, wait a moment. Someone _had_ noticed.

Sitting to her left was Kitajima, Maya, who had discretely slipped her a piece of paper. Maya smiled excitedly when Jillian snatched the paper between her index and middle finger, quickly folding it into her hands under her desk as our instructor turned to face the class.

This itself was disappointing. The girl I had previously had affections for idolized Jillian as well as the majority of girls in our class. They actually looked up to her in a disturbing sort of way.

"It`s so neat that you and Jill have been friends for so long!" Maya had told me last year, we were in eighth grade.

"She`s so outgoing, and you`re so reserved. I guess that's why the two of you are such close friends, right?"

I had to curb a sneer.

"We`re just friends. That`s all," I had stated so that she would stop trying to pick apart my relationship with the girl I had been reduced to babysitting. At that point I had become a little fonder of the girl, but at a slow pace, and mostly out of respect for my mother.

My soft spot for her had started to grow after she had tried to off herself.

It was assumed that I was hopelessly in love with the girl. Maybe I would be less offended had my pride not been scratched every time any of our peers assumed I was devoted to a girl that was supposedly _too good to be with me_.

Then again, there were some girls that despised Jillian for the exact same reason. Our unofficial "fan clubs" had constant material and drama going on between them that it was often very hard to keep up on, let alone horrifically uninteresting.

Jillian seemed to enjoy the attention though, and she shook with restrained laughter as she read Maya`s words.

Maya looked at her with adoration, pleased that Jillian was amused with whatever she had written her. Jillian winked appreciatively, and whispered the words,

"That dreadful whore."

Maya`s hands flew to her mouth, caught off guard by Jillian`s foul language. Though most students would have been horrified at those words coming from anyone else`s lips, they found it hilarious coming from Jillian. Maya about bit her hand off trying to keep from laughing, tears forming in her eyes.

They were talking about Nagasawa, who was sitting a few seats back and to our right. She was probably watching the entire scene unfold from her desk in the back of the room, extremely irritated.

I couldn`t feel her staring holes into the back of my head at that moment, so they must have been beaming into Jill`s. It was hard to ignore the two of us, especially when seated so close to each other, what with her hair being the color of sunshine and mine an obscene red among the sea of darker, neutral colors.

I watched as Jillian began to write on her notes. She slid her notebook to the left so that Maya could look off of it. They sent each other mischievous looks throughout the rest of the class, passing what they considered valuable information back and forth to each other without being caught.

"Ugh, I don`t want to go to orchestra." Maya groaned to Jillian after the bell rang. Jillian gave her a questioning look.

"_We_ don`t have orchestra today." She stated, cradling her books in her arms. Maya looked at her in confusion for a moment before realizing that Jillian was planning on skipping.  
"Come on, Jill. It looks bad when the concert master skips."

Not like that stopped her. Usually your chair in orchestra is demoted if you`re caught skipping more than an allowed amount of times, but that never stopped Jillian. Not only that, but she was cocky due to the fact that she had been playing violin before she could walk and therefore was far more advanced than the rest of her section.

"Now, Jillian," I intervened, "I thought you liked orchestra?"

The girls both looked over their shoulders, shocked, as if they`d forgotten I had been sitting behind them. Jillian tilted her head, smiling up at me innocently with her heart shaped lips.

"I do love it, but Elise has a tennis match, and I can`t miss."

"Aren`t you banned from the stands?" Maya asked before I could ask myself. Yes, Jillian had been thrown out of the last match because she had been too vulgar while cheering her younger sister on.

"I don`t plan on watching from the court." The innocent smile turned into a mischievous one.

"Anyway, my dad must have forgotten that he was supposed to give me his car keys before leaving for his business trip, so I had better skedaddle if I want to be at Sarayashiki before the game starts."

"You don`t drive." I pointed out to her. Her only response was a brief shoulder shrug and an absent minded,

"What a perfect opportunity to learn! Kitajima, you coming?"

A groan bled through my teeth, and I followed the girls out of the school, purposely staying a few feet behind so that I wouldn`t annoy Jillian too much. She had a tendency of turning into an escape artist when she felt the threat of being looked after.

I didn`t plan on trampling on her fun this time. I was slightly interested in watching her make a fool out of herself. Sometimes it was best to let her learn from her own mistakes.

I caught her giving me a look over her shoulder, and her unpleasant scowl twisted the delicate features she had been graced with. I didn`t need to be able to read minds to hear her thoughts screaming at me.

_You had better not fuck this up. _

**TEEN IDOL**

**You`ve been acting awful tough lately, smoking a lot of cigarettes lately.**

**But inside, you`re just a little baby.**

Maya startled, shoulders jumping several inches upwards as Jillian pressed her palms into the horn just as the neon green tennis ball hit the court, scoring a point for Elise and her partner.

We were currently parked on the other side of the fence of the tennis courts. Jillian was not allowed near the courts or the stands, so she had to suffice with parking just outside of them, finding the loudest possible option.

No lesson was being learned here.

"Come on Yukimura," She hissed under her breath, "Let`s see a real serve."

Elise had always partnered with the brunette girl that hung around the two often. Elise and Keiko`s amusement was apparent as their heads rolled back with laughter every time Jillian beat her fists against the horn.

She lit a cigarette and inhaled, steadying her shivering for a moment. The scent of nicotine filled my nostrils, prickling at my senses.

"Where`s your jacket?" Maya turned to the shivering girl sitting in the driver`s seat, who "mm"d in reply to her, too focused on the game to process the words.

"Jill."

"What?"

"Where`s your blazer?" Maya asked again.

"Left it at home." Jillian lied and cracked the window, despite the brisk, fall air.

Maya and I both knew that she was lying, that she had worn the fitted blazer to school that morning.

She must have soiled the garment when she had purged her lunch.

Maya probably didn`t know the truth, but she wasn`t about to call Jillian a liar over a uniform. She remained silent for a few minutes.

Jill`s grey eyes stared at me through the side mirror as she exhaled some smoke through her nostrils. We stared intensely at each other for a little while, having a silent conversation about the effects of smoking.

About halfway through the stare-down, she flicked the remaining half of the cigarette out the window, giving in. Maya hadn`t noticed, in fact, no one ever noticed how easily I was able to subdue Jillian with only a look. The guilt she saw in me was the same guilt she could see in Shiori, whom she felt extremely indebted to for getting her the help she needed.

Her eyes lingered on mine through the side mirror for a little while longer, and I saw through her mask for a split second. The Jillian that Jillian didn`t show to anyone unless it was by a fluke.

I saw fear, and before I could blink, it disappeared. Her eyes returned to the match.

And then, a mangled snort came from her throat. Yukimura had swung the racket and sent the ball sailing into the chest of the player on the other team. Jillian started flailing with laughter, smacking the steering wheel and then finally laying on the horn once more.

"No one scored," Maya pointed out, and Jillian wiped tears of joy from her eyes,  
"Oh, Keiko _definitely_ just scored," Her words were almost incoherent from all of her laughter. Maya giggled in return, finally catching onto what was so funny.

Did I already mention how disappointed I was in Kitajima for idolizing Jillian? She used to be so independent and creative.

Of course, if any of these girls knew the real Jillian, they wouldn`t know what to do with themselves. There are pricey fees for those who set on such high pedestals, and Jillian had been setting on them her entire life.

And yet if any of our peers knew my true identity, the reactions would be just as horrific. At least the alias Jillian kept was still human.

/

"Nice shot, Keiko!" Jillian greeted the girls as they headed for the car. Keiko cracked a smile in reply, knowing that it wasn`t exactly something she should have been laughing at, but after being touched by Jillian`s sick sense of humor, it was hard to ignore.

"Oh, I know, right?" The other blonde piped up. Jillian`s younger sibling, Elise wasn`t nearly as heartless and senseless as her sister, but was identical in almost every other aspect.

"So proud to call you my sisters." Jillian`s voice was thick with sarcasm. I moved over so that the two girls could fit in the back seat with me.

"What up, Shuichi?" Elise winked at me, and I noticed Jillian`s mischievous grin was among Elise`s features as well.

"I`m fine, how are you today, Elise?"

"Grand. Sorry I`m a little sweaty." She apologized, not that I minded.

"Are we taking the car to Shuichi`s?" Elise asked, concerned. Jillian`s eyes flashed to the rearview mirror, darting between Elise and I. We both patiently awaited her answer, wondering what her next move was.

"We might as well," Her eyes fixed back onto the road.

"Does she know that you don`t have a permit?"

Jillian stole another careful glance at me in the rearview mirror.

"Well, Shuichi`s just going to tattle on me anyway. Might as well just go through with it."

Elise pouted, and turned to me,

"Aw, Shu, what Shiori doesn`t know won`t kill her." She tried to reason, and I stifled a laugh as the begrudging words rolled off of my tongue,

"No, but it might kill Jillian."

There was awkward silence then, as Keiko and Maya didn`t understand what I was saying. Elise drew in a shaky breath, growing more uncomfortable as the seconds ticked by. Jillian remained silent, unnerved, though I know she was raging on the inside. She continued to drive to Maya`s house.

"Be good, you guys!" Kitajima smiled warmly and waved as she shut the car door behind her. Elise moved to the front seat after she had left, leaving room between Keiko and I.

No one had said anything since my brash comment. She continued to drive the younger girl home, a two story building with a diner on the first floor and what could only be her home on the second. It was fall, and the days were getting shorter. There were lights on upstairs, illuminating the rooms above the little restaurant. It looked peaceful, calm.

I knew my home looked similar from the outside.

/

"Dinner`s on the table," Shiori peered down the hallway at us from the kitchen. There was another voice that had been speaking when we first walked in, and an unfamiliar car in the driveway.

I knew this day would come. Shiori had brought home another man. She`d told me about Hatanaka, but I`d forgotten all about his visit this evening.

Jillian threw me a confused look before smiling innocently at Shiori, who gestured for the three of us to take out seats. Jillian was safe for the time being. I wasn`t going to have Shiori`s friend scared away; She needed this human moment.

We were all formally introduced and took our seats at the table. Jillian picked nervously at the food that Shiori had served, and Elise and I ate slowly and quietly as the happy conversation floated in and out of our ears, all of us on autopilot, too afraid to speak to each other after not breaking the uncomfortable barrier that had fabricated between us.

"Jill, is that your car out in front of the house?" Shiori asked, curious. Jillian put her fork down next to her plate. She hadn`t touched anything, just pushed the rice and beef around in front of her.

"No, it`s our father's."

"I didn`t know you had your permit," Shiori was approaching the subject very lightly. She was easy to anger regardless of the situation, however, that didn`t mean the guilt trip Jillian would suffer through wasn`t unpleasant. Nothing was worse that mother`s guilt trips.

I watched the blonde internally struggle with herself, gnawing off her bottom lip in the process. Her round, grey eyes looked up at me from under long, mascara-laced lashes. Just as she drew a breath, predicting that I would call her fowl regardless of the excuse she made, I saved her, interrupting,

"Jillian-kun can be a very surprising young woman sometimes, she`s a natural at driving."

It wasn`t a lie. Technically, I never told her that Jillian had a permit or license of any sort.

It was enough to amuse my mother, who smiled proudly at the girl. Jillian desperately tried to hide her shock, but she only sat, looking skeptically back and forth between Elise and I.

_Thank you_, she finally mouthed when our eyes met again. She sighed with relief, realizing that it wasn`t a hoax. I had really helped her out this time.

"Jillian!"

Shiori`s sudden exclamation made the girl jump several inches in her seat, plates rattling at the sudden movement. Jillian stared, wide eyed up at my mother with fearful eyes.

"Eat that beef, it`s good for you." She changed her tone, going back to it`s soothing self. She didn`t seem to notice the panic she had sent the girl into, neither did Hatanaka. Elise and I chuckled to ourselves, and Jillian scowled, picking at the meat on her plate.

Shiori looked across the table at me, smiling warmly. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, she froze, and inhaled quickly. The napkin on her lap was raised to her mouth and she began to cough violently. I was at my feet instantly, but Shiori put her hand up, gesturing for me to stay put.

"Just the cough, honey," She rasped, "I`m not choking."

Still, I stood, watching her finish her coughing fit. Jillian pushed herself away from the table as well, and went to fetch the water pitcher from the fridge.

When Shiori pulled the rag away from her face, my nose twitched. The familiar smell of copper, mixed with my mother`s scent. She had coughed blood into the rag. She had folded it the moment she took it from her face and placed it back on her lap before I could see the stain for myself.

Jillian`s concerned eyes flashed between Shiori and I as she poured the water in the empty glass. My mother smiled, trying to deter Jillian`s worry.

"What service," She beamed up at the two of us as we watched her. This was the third time this week that this had happened. I had never noticed the blood before this night.

"Shiori, maybe you should see the doctor about that cold." Jillian suggested, having witnessed the same episodes that I had.

My mother shook her head, and patted Hatanaka`s hand,

"The kids take such good care of me, don`t they?" He smiled back at her, nodding and offering us a look of approval.

"I`ll see someone tomorrow, dears, don`t you worry too much." She turned back to us, and laid her head in her hand.

"What would I do without all of you? I have a lovely family."

I caught another look at Jillian, who`s cheeks had tinged rouge. Her eyes flickered to mine, and she scowled at the smile that I was giving her. Jillian was strange when it came to affection like this.

"I`m going to go practice." Jillian grumbled, referring to her violin, and excused herself from the room after setting the water back on its shelf in the fridge. She disappeared from the room before Shiori could notice that she hadn`t finished her plate.

"That girl," Shiori sighed, and she wrapped her fingers around mine as I still stood protectively over her.

"Will you please take her that food and ask her to take a few more bites?" As she shifted, I noticed the blood on the rag that was sitting on her lap. It wasn`t much, but it could get worse.

"I`ll take it to her," Elise offered.

"No, I`ll go ahead." Not expecting Elise to convince her sister of much. She was admittedly much more mature than Jillian and tended to look after her, but she was also easy to sway, and Jillian tended to be manipulative of her.

I found Jillian in the back parlor. She stood before a stand, writing something on her sheet music. She held her instrument to her by its neck, her finger curling around the bow.

She gave my a slightly disgusted look as I shut the door behind me, balancing her food in one hand and my own in the other. I set her plate on the coffee table that set between the sofa and the rocking chair in the middle of the room.

"Don`t expect a thank you for that stunt you pulled on me back there." She nestled the instrument back under her chin, tightening the hair on the bow,

"I don`t owe you for anything. I don`t care if Shiori`s angry with me. I don`t need your help."

"That`s a lie." I pointed out to her as I picked at my own food from the sofa. She brought the violin back down and whirled to glare at me,

"What do you want from me?"

"I know the truth, I`d just like to hear you say it," And then I pointed to the plate on the table, "And Shiori says you aren`t done eating. Let`s not make this any harder than it is."

She stared for a while before giving in and placing the instrument back in the case. She reached for the plate and sat in the rocking chair.

"What do you mean the truth?" She asked quietly, afraid of finding out what I know about her.

"You don`t have to be so cold to the woman." More comfortable on calling her out without an audience, I continued,

"You know you enjoy having someone care about you."

She snorted, resentfully taking a bite of beef, chewing over what her reply would be. She would have to choose her words carefully if she wanted to argue my point.

"It isn`t my place to bask in your mother`s affections. I have a mother."

Her words were bitter,

"And plenty of other people care about me."

"Those people only care about the Jillian you want them to think you are. If they saw you in the hospital a year ago, do you think they would care about that Jillian?"

"You really like throwing that up in my face."

"Jill, I know I`m hardly your favorite person, and I don`t expect things to change," Her face contorted into curiosity as I went on,

"I too know what it`s like to protect your true identity from others, but I would prefer if you would come to terms with who you really are, even if only in this room."

Her shoulders slumped, and she relaxed back into the chair, rocking forwards and backwards, letting it lull her.

"I have a reputation."

_As do I._

"That reputation is devouring you."

She stared off into the distance, half open eyes.

"This Jillian is subdued, she doesn`t maintain any airs in her personality. She has deep thoughts," I went on, describing the human in front of me,

"She knows every word to every Jane Austen novel, she listens to ballads, and she doesn`t need to prove anything to anyone. Do you see where I`m going with this?"

Jillian continued to stare, not showing any signs of realization.

I took the plate from her lap, and left her to sit. Maybe one day I would get through to her.

For now I would have to wait.


	3. Hypocrates

I watched as Jillian brushed the cherry red color over my mother`s fingernails. Shiori laid in a hospital bed, condemned to wait for a break in her fever, which refused to budge. She had been sick for a few months, and hadn`t improved since that night I`d noticed she was coughing blood.

I was bitter, as Mother hadn`t gone to the doctor as she`d promised. Though I would never reprimand or even utter an I told you so, I often found myself rampant at the off chance that her putting off a simple office visit was what sealed her fate.

"You didn`t blob a single one." She smiled up at Jillian who had perched herself on the side of her bed.

"You didn`t think I would leave you with messy fingernails." Jillian laughed lightly, gently cupping her hand around my mother`s arm and giving her a squeeze.

I saw her smile, that proud flash of white teeth that was unmistakably genuine.

"Now, Jill, don`t you see what you could achieve if you applied the same kind of focus as you do painting your nails to your schooling?" She asked. Jill laughed again, suppressing it as she tried her best to frown at the comment. Shiori delighted in Jillian`s company, not in the same way as our peers did, but as a grandparent doted over their grandchildren. She wasn`t hers to pick apart and fuss over in the same way as she did with me, but she was still allowed to be a guiding force in Jill`s life.

"Your hair`s gotten so long." Her dark eyes fluttered to Jillian`s loose curls, "It looks like spun gold."

"Oh c'mon," The girl`s face turned rouge, "I`m blushing, really."

On any other day if Shiori had been well, Jill wouldn`t have accepted the compliment. Today she accepted it, even if it was ungracefully done.

Visiting hours would be over soon, and Jillian looked over at me as if she could read my mind.  
"I think I`ll leave the two of you alone. It was so nice seeing you, Shiori." Jillian stood from the bed and embraced my mother briefly before straightening and exiting the room. She smiled at me on her way out, sadly. Her eyes were filled with sympathy, as if everyone knew that my mother wouldn`t make it.

I tried not to take it as an insult, but it didn`t soothe me to know that everyone had already given up on the woman.

I waited for the door to click shut before I rounded the bed and sat in Jillian`s spot.

"I`ll be back again tomorrow night, Mother. The same time." I took her frail hand and held it in mine, "Is there anything you would like me to bring you?"

She inhaled as if it was hard for her to even take a decent breath, and I feared that if I left now it would be my last time seeing her alive. What if something happened to her over the night and I wasn`t there to pester the nursing staff and the doctors?

"Shuichi, dear, please stop looking at me like that." I was broken from my racing thoughts and I realized that my face had been frozen solid in concern. Shiori patted the back of my hand and sighed,

"Now, you need to go home and get some rest, maybe eat a little something. Jillian would probably be happy to help you make some dinner." She rasped, her eyes half open. She was probably far more tired than she looked.

I nodded, not determined enough to argue with her. I leaned in and pecked her on the cheek before bidding her farewell.

* * *

**HYPOCRATES**

**Yeah you played the martyr for so long**  
**That you can't do anything wrong**

Time was not on our side, and I would have to be careful to say the least when it came to cracking into the Spirit World`s vault. Inside of that vault was the cure for Shiori`s illness and nothing was going to keep me from that. I decided that I would have to meet with Hiei immediately to discuss strategy on our raid.

If I could find him, that was. I was sure that the brash demon prided himself in being hard to track down.

Jillian was sitting in the waiting room patiently, not looking the least bit anxious to get out of the hospital. This was peculiar because she was so against being in them after her 'accident'.

When I entered the room she stood and made her way to my side as I headed for the elevator.

We didn`t speak to each other, as we never really conversed much when we were alone. I pressed the button for the ground floor and we let the whirring of the elevator drown out our silence.

I was surprised she had been so willing to visit Shiori at all. She seemed like the type that wouldn`t feel obligated to maintain regular hospital visits. After all, her own mother was ill and in need of company every day, and Jillian acted as if she were already dead.

The only feasible explanation for her behavior was guilt, she felt she needed to make up for her absence in her birthmother`s life with Shiori, whom she had always treated with as much blatant disregard as most teenage girls did to their mothers.

I suppose that was unfair of me. Jillian did care for Shiori, just not the same way that I did.

"I have some errands to run," I told her as we reached the bottom level. The doors parted with a familiar ring and we stepped out into the lobby, heading for the front doors, "Should I walk you home?"

I never expected her to take the offer, I only asked her out of politeness. Jillian often had other activities she had lying around in case she could get away from Shiori and I for an evening.

"No, that`s alright. I`m meeting Elise in the city for our salon appointment."

That too would be fine, as Elise was mature enough to handle the girl. The sisters were exceptionally close for siblings. They acted more like old friends than sisters, who are known to bicker and pull each other`s hair. Elise was more laid back and knew how to handle Jillian`s antics and episodes better than anyone else. Not only that, but the amount of Reiki that Elise possessed was that of a psychic. She was an interesting character to say the least, and more than capable of keeping Jillian out of harm`s way.

"I`ll see you at school tomorrow, then." I nodded at her, and she offered one last glance at me before she turned and headed the other direction down the street, not bothering to bid me goodbye.

Astonishingly enough, I found one of the few demon alliances I had on my walk back home. Petite with tan skin and dark features, Hiei must have been waiting for me, as he knew I crossed this path every day on my walk back from visiting my mother. He leaned idly against the fencing near the sidewalk under the street lamp that had turned on as dusk began to shade the town. He wasn`t the only shadow I had sensed coming out to play that evening.

"Where`s your pet?" Hiei noted that Jillian wasn`t with me today. They had never met and I hoped that they wouldn`t. It was certain that Jillian would be entertained by provoking him. She wouldn`t be able to stand Hiei`s looming about without infuriating the demon, which wasn`t exactly a superlative idea.

"Hello, Hiei. Jillian had to make an appointment." I greeted him. His lips twisted into a smirk and his auburn eyes opened to look at me. He was arrogant, but the fact that he spoke without insulting me directly was his own form of respect.

"I can`t fathom how you manage accommodating such pests. It`s not as if your human slaves are of any use to you."

"Now Hiei, they are rather entertaining. I suppose you would have to have a sense of humor to understand."

He frowned, lips forming an angered pout. He didn`t exactly roll his eyes, but I notice them flicker upwards for a moment incredulously.

"As soon as I have that conjuring blade and have slaves of my own, perhaps I`ll understand."  
I wasn`t supportive of his use for his coveted treasure, but there was no one else that I could find for the job. Hiei was fast and flexible, he would be critical to the operation at hand. As for the third, a hulking and blundering mass of greed, Gouki, was along for the ride as well with his own sadistic need for the third artifact, the Orb of Baast.

It would only be a matter of time before we`re all hunted down by the Spirit World anyway, I just hope to have made use of the mirror before it needed to be returned. After that, they could haul me away for all I cared.

Because I would be cold and dead by then.

/

"Have you ever been to the Sears Tower in Chicago?" Jillian appeared next to me. We were with our class, on a field trip. I had been lost in thought, looking down at the city from the top of the Tokyo Tower. I had hardly noticed her.

She looked down on the city from the great height, she didn`t seem her usual mischievous self. This had caught my interest. Perhaps she wasn`t taking her medicine. I wasn`t exactly in the mood for one of her episodes, seeing that my mother was already in the hospital.

"No, I`ve never been."

She didn`t take her eyes from the streets below, just kept staring.

"It`s much higher than this," She continued, "When you ride the elevator to the top floor your ears pop. It`s so much more peaceful than this."

She frowned, disappointed by the landmark.

"The city is so noisy and unnerving, I hate being down there. Chicago is the same way. None of the traffic laws are enforced, everyone`s laying on their horns. I nearly have an anxiety attack every time I`m in a city. But when I go up in the tower it`s as if all of my problems are down at the bottom, and they`ll stay there. I can look down at them through the clouds. It`s like I`ve died and gone to heaven and I have nothing to worry about."

"You don`t show it. You`re always in the city."

"I have to find something to do, otherwise…" She paused, trying to find a word.  
"You`ll implode." I offered, and she nodded in reply.

And then she did something completely out of character. Her arms slid around me and she laid her head against my chest. I didn`t tense at the gesture, I let her hold me, wondering just how off balance the chemicals in her brain were today.

Our peers watched this intimate moment between us, observing with curious eyes.

"Shiori will get better." I heard her murmur into my chest. I tilted my head to the side. This girl was trying to comfort me?

I was certain that I had not let my worry show. I would never show my weakness, especially not to another human.

I stepped away, pulling the arm I had placed over her shoulders to my side. She stepped back as well, and flashed me a white-teeth smile before pivoting on her heel and disappearing into a crowd of students.

Though I shouldn`t have been surprised. Jillian and I had visited Shiori in the hospital many times over the past few weeks. She had watched me carefully watch over my mother as she lay, terminally ill in a hospital bed.

She was right, though.

My mother would recover as soon as I was able to utilize the Forlorn Hope. It was two weeks to date until the next full moon, and I my hours were numbered. I`d been hoping Shiori could hold on until then, but she was fading fast with every passing moment.

I wondered briefly about Jillian again, finding her pervading my thoughts more often as the months passed between us. What would she do after I was gone?

I looked back to her chattering among a group of peers. They looked at her with adoration, soaking up the information she was feeding them like drones. She would be fine, with medicine and therapy. She had every comfort handed to her on a silver platter.

Then there was Elise, who had the potential to protect her own kin.

Mother of course was another story. She would be upset after losing me. But she would reconcile, as all human hearts do after the grieving process has come and gone. She had Hatanaka and his son to dote over, and she would be fine.

She would be fine.

She would be fine.

/

Holding the Forlorn Hope felt like exactly that—Forlorn Hope. Hope that my mother would live out her life, and forlorn for my eternally damned soul. I had evaded death once before, it was high time the great Youko Kurama was finally laid to rest.

Hiei was pleased to say the least, in awe of all the demon slaves he planned on creating with his blade. The Reikai would be on him within only a few days. That is, if he truly intended on slaying the masses and controlling them as a demon army. Something told me that Hiei wasn`t quite so mad.

Gouki, however, did not have a conscience to speak of, nor honor. He would use the orb to steal the innocent souls and devour them, leaving them with no escape to any form of afterlife.

I wasn`t about to boast that my cause was slightly more noble, but I had already committed one crime against the Reikai, and I wasn`t about to defile my records any further than I was sure they were. If I were to live, I would be severely punished.

"I shall create a thousand man-eating monsters with this sword." Hiei grinned malignantly, perhaps I had misjudged him. He was rather smug, and the power from that blade was quickly rushing to his head.

"And allow me to feed your man-eating monsters, by acquiring the victim`s soul with this globe first." Gouki offered, and they reveled in their plans for a moment.

I could sense someone`s spirit energy closing in on us, making it ideal to take my exit in that moment.

"I apologize, but I`m withdrawing." I confessed, and the shock on the two`s faces was apparent. I had undoubtedly caught them off guard.

"What do you mean?" Hiei spat, turning venomous now, "You want to leave us?"

"That`s right," I answered him. Their dispositions changed immediately, as if I were ending a committed relationship with them. Although humorous, I kept a straight face before their display of rage. I suppose I had Jill to thank for this skill, as I had worked hard not to laugh in the girl`s face over many years of putting up with her madness.

"Coward!" Hiei continued, "You are acting like a typical human."

I suppose he thought that would really _cut me deep, _in Jillian`s terms.

"We don`t need to give part of the loot to a person like you! Return the dark mirror!" Gouki would demand it back, as if stealing every soul he desired wasn`t enough for him. I doubted that he would have any real use for the Forlorn Hope.

"That won`t do!" I feigned innocence, "I shall be needing this mirror."

"I won`t allow your reckless actions!" Gouki raised his voice, and began to charge at me with his fist,

"With my own powers, I shall take the mirror back!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a shadow appear. A younger boy, no older than fifteen maybe. I didn`t budge as Gouki came barreling towards me. My distraction had arrived.

"Yo! Hang on!" His tone was playfully aggressive, and he grinned.

"Why don`t you pass me all three treasures? Then you can continue your little argument afterwards, my three bandits."

Yes, he was arrogant as well. Surely this would be his downfall. Of course, I didn`t plan on harming Spirit World`s shiny new bounty hunter. Underestimating his strength was unwise, and I didn`t need to make any more enemies for the time being. If I played my cards right, maybe he would be passionate enough to understand my need for the mirror.

"How did you know what we did in the Spirit World?" Gouki had lowered his fist and completely forgotten about me. I waited a little longer, interested in this new character.

"I didn`t think I would find you so quickly either." He stepped forward, ambition twinkling in his wide, brown eyes. The definition of a punk, he was the type of boy that Jill would easily eat the heart of and then throw away as if they were the piece of trash they portrayed themselves to be.

Except this one was different, he had ambition, courage. He was not a true sleaze.

"I`ll give you a little scare and tell you!" His grin spread further, proud to announce his new position as Spirit Detective,

"Urameshi Yusuke, and now, put your hands up and surrender!"

Hiei and Gouki muttered to themselves about the boy, still in disbelief we had been found so soon. They proceeded to move on to observing how weak he appeared on the outside, which seemed to irk the boy a little.

"Idiots!" Yusuke grumbled, "I`m not afraid of you at all!"

I watched Hiei lock eyes with the Detective, wheels turning in his head, telling himself that this boy could possess a huge reservoir of energy. He backed off, sailing upwards into one of the surrounding trees.

"I won`t be participating in this fight!" Hiei called out, watching from the branches above, leaving me with Gouki down on the ground. I couldn`t be caught should Gouki choose to turn and make a run for it, so I decided to take my leave in that moment.

The detective called after me, but the hulking mass of lower class demon would keep him busy, leaving a little time to disappear.

Upon entering my quiet, suburban home, my nose was filled with the smell of something I hadn`t been all that acquainted with. An Italian spice, oregano. I could smell the familiar scent of jasmine and daisy mixed in, and I knew that Jillian was in the kitchen.

I didn`t expect to find the girl there, especially without Shiori around to entertain her. But there she stood, before the stove, over a pan of ground beef and tomato sauce. A pot of boiled noodles was cooling in the sink.

She glanced up at me briefly before returning to stirring her sauce.

"This is a surprise, to say the least."

"Yeah, well, Elise has to stay late tonight for some team meeting, and I figured I would wait here for her…" Her words faded in and out of my ears as she spoke. My hand was in my pocket, placed over the stolen artifact.

I only had a few days left before Shiori would recover.

"…So I thought maybe you could use some supper." I turned back to the girl, who was fixing a plate of pasta. I had never eaten it before, but I knew what it was. Jillian and Elise were very acquainted with their roots, and they thoroughly enjoyed American styled food.

It was startling, as Jillian had never really shown any real interest in me unless she was confirming that I was out of her way for anything she didn`t want me to witness.

More pity; it was the only answer. She was pitying me. I had to give her the benefit of the doubt, however. Jillian didn`t realize that Kurama could fend for himself, she only saw Shuichi, pampered and taken care of by his mother on a daily basis. Not to mention, spoiled with affection.

"Please don`t feel obligated to care for me. I`ll be fine." I told her, as I pulled a couple glasses out from the cupboard.

She tensed, and I could feel the air in the room change at my comment. I had offended her.

I was all black now, when I had been in the white just a moment before. That was the way her mind worked; black and white. If she was offended by the way you looked at her, she would categorize you in black, and she would treat you cruelly and coldly.

If you were in the white, like Shiori and her younger sister, she adored and worked hard to please you.

"_Obligated_?" She hissed, dropping the wooden spoon into the pan. She faced me now, emotions growing more intense.

"You think I do everything because I feel obligated to, not because I want to," She pounced, searching for every answer that she did not want to hear.

"Jill, what I meant was-"

"You think that I visit Shiori because I feel like I owe her! God, it never even occurred to you that I could think and feel something for the woman," She went on,

"Elise didn`t even have a meeting tonight!"

I stopped, confused. Surely she wouldn`t have gone so far out of her way…

"When will you learn, Shuichi?" She turned, untying her apron from around her waist, crumpling the material in her fist,

"All this time everyone has been preaching to me to control my emotions, but you have the balls to sit pretty and act like you don`t feel anything. If you ask me, _that_ isn`t normal."

She stormed down the hallway, and I didn`t hesitate to follow her, trying to calm her as she reached into the closet for her coat.

"Jillian please just relax,"

"Ha!" Her laugh was sarcastic, and she slammed the closet door shut before slipping into a leather jacket.

She stared at me, and I at her. We did this in silence, just trying to figure the other out. When I thought she would just walk out the door, she sighed, breaking eye contact.

"Everybody needs somebody, Shu," Her words were calm now, like the sea after a storm,

"You need a friend, everyone needs friends."

Her next words were hard for her to say, but she managed anyway, speaking a string of consonants and vowels that would sincerely baffle me for quite some time,

"I wanted to be there for you."

Then I felt my lips turn upwards, tugging on a smile. She was right, it was good to have company in such a dark time. I had been so bitter, thinking of nothing but death for so long.

It was pleasant, to have someone else to share the silence in the elevator, and to laugh at things that weren`t supposed to be funny.

That was the first time I recognized the Jillian that I had eventually fallen in love with. She was more than the con she had fooled everyone into thinking she was. She was much more complex than we all thought, with layers and shades upon layers and shades of thoughts and patterns.

Before I could say anything, she was out the door and into the night.

I stood in the hall, feeling guilty, full of resentment for the past.

I would have to make amends.


	4. Same Blood

I approached the girl with caution, uncertain of her current mood. If Jillian was inebriated, her emotions were definitely heightened. I could create disaster if she was still peeved about our encounter earlier that evening in the kitchen.

She laid in the grass just a kilometer outside of the party after having wandered into the forest, her scent lingering on several trees she had leaned against when she`d stumbled over the roots and rocks laying around the path. I found her on her back, looking up at the night sky where there was a small break in the forest for a meadow of late blooming wildflowers. The mid-September breeze rustled our clothes and our hair, causing the girl to shudder, wrapping her arms around herself, her cardigan not enough to shield her from the night air.

I cleared my throat as I pretended to have just arrived on the scene, taking a few steps out from behind the shelter of the trees. Jillian propped herself up on her elbows and tilted her head backwards to identify me. We made eye contact, and her stare didn`t seem angry, though it was hard to tell with her sometimes. Whether she decided to hide her emotions was completely up to her, depending on if she wanted the timing to be perfect for a confrontation.

"Hey, Shu," She laid herself back down, plucking a flower from the grass, twirling it idly between her fingers. I felt an unusual easiness surrounding her. Passive, thoughtful feelings were coming from her, an unusual vibe for someone that was under constant emotional distress.

"Hello there," I towered over the girl as she laid at my feet. I smiled down at her, and she looked at me with her large, grey eyes, filled with thought. Blonde hair swirled around her head like a golden halo.

"Everyone`s looking for you." I told her, and she closed her eyes, revealing long, mascara-laden lashes. She was staring intently at her feet, which were bare. Jillian liked to be barefoot. Despite her obsession with hygiene, she said she preferred to go without shoes when she was alone. I smiled at her pedicured toes, painted her favorite, bright red as always.

Something about this side of Jillian was refreshingly innocent.

"They must be if they sent you after me," She snickered to herself, "How do you always know where to find me?" She rolled over, propping her chin in her hands as she looked up at me curiously. Slate eyes sparkled as she marveled, and she couldn`t help but show her childish grin.

"Everyone knows that Jillian Beckett is unpredictable, yet they never think to look in the unpredictable places. I suppose part of it is also luck…" And a heightened sense of smell due to my demon roots.

"Hmm." She mused, kicking her feet up and brushing her calves back and forth,

"I suppose you`re the top of the class for a reason."

"Naturally."

We were hushed for a moment, and I decided that I would take that chance to apologize for upsetting the girl. I didn`t want to leave this world, leaving her with only the bitter memories. Knowing Jillian, she would automatically assume responsibility for being the cause of my death, no matter who tried to prove her wrong. She was too paranoid not to.

"I apologize for not appreciating what you tried to do for me earlier." I noticed her prickle slightly at the mention of our most recent spat. She averted her gaze, rolling back to face the sky once more with a sigh.

"I`m sorry I overreacted. It just happens…" She trailed, and I realized that the girl may have had more of a hold on her emotions than I gave her credit for.

"Don`t apologize for that, it truly was my fault." I validated her emotions for her, as that was important to those with her specific disease.

"I give you so much shit…" She murmured, her words slurring a little. She may not have been as drunk as I assumed she would be.

"Nothing I can`t handle," I tried to reassure, but my words went in one ear and right out the other.

"Pfft," She snorted, laughing darkly to herself, "You`ve always hated me, Shu, you can be honest with me. I`ve messed with you and Shiori more than you could have ever imagined. I`m sure you just loved being called out here on your Friday night." It wasn`t hard to understand her in her altered state, as Jillian had a way of carefully pronouncing her words. She spoke as if she were an actress in the old movies, with a sort of distinction in her voice that made people listen.

"It`s too late to visit Mother," I pointed out to her, "I really didn`t have much to do."

"Still." Jillian protested, letting out another exhausted sigh, "I guess there`s no point in arguing with you any further. Just take me home now."

I opened my mouth, but stopped short. Why did she seem so defeated now? Usually Jillian danced around with this type of conversation for a while when she was feeling down, allowing the fountain of self-pity from within pour out of her until she had exhausted herself. When she was drunk it usually pushed her to blabber on for even longer, passively brushing off the comments until she felt she`d won the dispute.

Jillian steadied herself on her feet, looking a bit like the protagonist from her favorite film, _The Little Mermaid_, upon receiving her new legs. I couldn`t help but chuckle as I reached out to keep her from falling. I could smell the alcohol mixing with her scent, she`d undeniably had too much to drink.

"Where are your shoes?" I asked as I held onto one of her arms as she teetered back and forth. She looked around the clearing of grass before shrugging,

"Beats me." She continued moving forwards, back in the direction towards the house, breaking free of my grasp as she became familiar with the feeling of walking. It was even more definite that she was intoxicated by the way she was stumbling in front of me through the dark. We didn`t speak for the mile and a half walk back to the house, only the sound of Jillian`s wavering footfalls crunching leaves beneath her and a few swears here and there as she nearly lost her balance along the way. A mile was a long walk for someone that`d had too much to drink.

* * *

**SAME BLOOD**

**Like the moon, we borrow our light.**

**I am nothing but a shadow in the night.**

Elise`s friend called out to us from the up on the front porch of the home, looking over the yard filled with cars. Maya was with her, grinning impishly upon our arrival. Surely there would be more rumors circulating about my innocent relationship with Jillian by Monday morning.

"I can give the kid a ride home, for ya," Maya offered Jillian and I as we approached the steps, and Jillian looked around, searching the area with a confused expression, mouth twisted into a frown.

"Where`s Elise?" She asked, suddenly concerned for the younger girl. It was probably the first time she`d thought of her kid sister that evening.

"She went to find you about an hour ago, and she had me call Shuichi-kun," Maya explained, wrapping an arm around the shorter, brunette girl, whom I had spoken to over the phone not an hour before.

"Oh no," Jillian`s knees buckled slightly, and she held onto the railing of the porch to support herself as she continued to look around, "I hope she`s okay…"

She then cradled her head in her hands and began to sink to the ground, letting out loud sobs. I should have known this side of Jillian was about to rear its ugly head. It was quite clear that she had been dancing on the edge between feeling numb and feeling overwhelmingly saddened.

"Oh dear," Elise`s petite friend crouched next to the girl,

"Oh, Jillian, I`m sure she`s fine, please don`t cry like that…"

"Elise is a tough cookie, she`s fine," Maya`s voice, less sympathetic chimed in with Keiko as she tried to lift the sobbing teenager back to her feet. Jillian shook her head, wiping the tears from her eyes to prevent the mascara from running.

"Take her home, I`ll keep an eye out for Elise." Maya rubbed Jillian`s back as she tried to compose herself, shaking from crying too hard. She handed Jillian over as well as her leather purse. I wrapped the strap across my shoulders, letting the bag rest against one of my hips.

"Come on, Jill," I reached out for her next, and wrapped my fingers around her arm once more. She didn`t fight to separate herself from me. No, instead, the child curled into my side as we made our way down the pathway leading to the street.

About halfway through my neighborhood, Jillian stepped on something sharp and I had to carry her back, cutting through private property to get home sooner. She never really stopped crying the entire way back. I`d expected her to be lulled to sleep as I carried her on my back, but she just sniffled the rest of the way. I expected her to torture herself about getting snot on my shirt, or something, as that was the theme of the evening.

No, she stayed silent as I helped her clean her feet in the kitchen before bandaging the injured arch on her right foot. It wasn`t too bad, nothing that would have inhibit her walking abilities all too much. She seemed to be in a dense state of thought as we sat at the kitchen table. She flexed her bad foot, slightly intrigued by the way I`d bandaged it.

"You aren`t sloppy with the wrapping like the doctors are." She pointed out, her eyes still red and puffy from crying so much earlier. She lifted melancholy irises to the sink full of dirty dishes that I had left from the meal she`d made, not having found the motivation to eat or clean them up after she`d stormed out. I knew she wanted to get up and put them away herself, but she thought better of it, not wanting to put weight on the abrasion.

"Yes, that can be a tad irritating, can`t it?"

She nodded, uttering her favorite phrase, "Unbearable." While reaching across the table for the bag, stopping short as soon as she reached into it.

"This is Elise`s bag…" She noticed as her hands curled around the brown leather bag, brow furrowing before pulling out a manila folder bearing familiar looking symbols. I gawked as I realized they read _Confidential Ghost Archives_. She hadn`t noticed the title, as it was facing the opposite direction from her. She flipped it open and began looking through the numerous papers that filled the file. I panicked, wondering whose file it was.

"Shinobu Sensui…" She read aloud, and I calmed, relieved that it wasn`t my file Elise had retrieved from the Spirit World. Who would have known that Elise had a connection to the Reikai? Perhaps she knew of the stolen artifacts.

I would have to be careful around the girl.

"She must have gotten this from a doctor`s office or something," Jillian`s brow furrowed as she continued to read, "Blood type, age… criminal history?" Her voice raised at the last phrase, panic stricken.

I snatched the file from her hands and shoved it back in the satchel.

"You should probably go to sleep."

Jillian looked up at me, aggravated. She wasn`t going to roll over on this one. Once her attention had been grabbed, it wasn`t easily diverted.

"Shuichi what the hell?" She reached for the bag again, "I want to know what my little sister`s doing with some weird guy`s criminal history!" I caught her wrists, wishing that there was an easier way to do what I was about to do.

Jillian wasn`t very strong at all, being a typical human female. I easily knocked her out once I`d spun her around, knuckles grazing the back of her head. I caught her wilting body in my arms before I retrieved the Mugen pollen from my pocket.

I lowered my face to the girl and kept my voice low, in her ear,

"You will forget seeing the file in Elise`s bag," I instructed her as she lay, unconscious in my arms,

"You fell asleep while I was tending to the cut on your foot."

After making sure I had successfully manipulated her thoughts, I carried Jillian upstairs and tucked her into what Shiori and I had considered her private bedroom for the last few years. She slept soundly, due to the effect of the pollen. I wasn`t pleased that I had to use it on her, as I`d never expected Elise to be associated with the Reikai. It was too close for comfort. I needed to know whether the younger Beckett was going to try to insert herself between the artifact and myself, foiling my plans to save my mother.

Of course, it was nearly certain that Elise would hear me out if that was the case. I had a strange feeling that I could trust the detective with the truth as well, a peculiar hunch, but still, a good hunch.

I looked back down at the sleeping girl, new thoughts bubbling to the surface of my mind. What would Jillian think about this? Would Elise tell her the truth, or keep that a secret as well as her connection with the Reikai? Would she let her sister believe my unexpected death was just coincidence should my mother suddenly be cured of her ailment?

Her chest was slowly rising and falling at its slowed cadence, calm and steady. I`d left her aspirin and water on the bedside table before turning the light out.

The waxing moon shone through the window, illuminating the two of us with its borrowed light.

I allowed myself that moment to bask in the light, knowing that I would soon know nothing else but the moonless dark.

_/_

I could smell the familiar scent of the detective on my way back from the hospital the very next night. Jillian was still hanging around at the house, and had been waiting for me to get back so that she could fix dinner. She`d been rather affectionate towards, and I didn`t fight her over it, allowing the both of us a few moments together before we had to part.

My nose twitched with another familiar scent, the scent of jasmine and daisies – Jillian`s perfume. Fragrances usually smelled different on those with different flesh and blood, but this was the same mix of Jillian`s scent and her perfume. Meaning either one of two things.

The crowd parted and I saw the young detective, supporting himself with a stick. Elise on was on his heels, looking around as if she was trying to find someone while the boy stared straight at me, bracing himself for whatever trouble he thought I was going to give him.

"Don`t be so tense," I greeted him, "I won`t to fight, and I won`t try to run."

"Shuichi?" Elise`s mouth hung open as I approached, stopping a few feet away.

"You two know each other?" He looked suspiciously back to his partner, and then back at me.

"He`s a friend of my sister…" Elise`s eyes chopped me up, accusingly, and I could tell she was irritated to know that she had been trusting me with so much for so long.

"And here I had convinced myself the infamous Kurama was deceased."

"I have a request," I confessed, and the boy looked back at Elise, uncertain.

"A request?" He asked.

"I`ll return the treasure in another two to three days. I`ll come find you then." I looked back to Elise`s suspicious gaze once again before adding,  
"Elise will know where to find me. I assure you this is not a hoax."

"He`s telling the truth." She confirmed, giving me one more steady gaze. She was looking at me differently now, as a threat instead of a friendly acquaintance. As soon as I explained to the two of them what I was going to use the mirror for, she would forgive this.

"Does Jillian know?" She asked as I brushed past the two, setting back out for home. I paused, not turning back to look at her.

"She doesn`t suspect a thing. However, I managed to pull a suspicious looking file away from her last night."

I could hear her breath catch in her throat before she swallowed her sudden outburst,

"I appreciate that… _Kurama_."

I nodded before carrying on with my walk home. Things were getting far too interesting far too fast. I admit, I was too interested to leave things there. I followed the two back to an apartment complex, watching from the rooftop of another complex across the street, curious of the background they bore.

Yusuke, the detective had trusted in my word. Elise had assured him as well that I was a man of my word, which was all that I needed to keep the Reikai off of my back until I could make use of the Forlorn Hope. It was a shame that Elise was a bounty hunter for the Spirit World.

I briefly pondered what she had done to indebt herself to the Ruler in order for her to be working for him.

Jillian greeted me when I`d arrived back at my house, curled up on the sofa with her old, battered copy of _Pride and Prejudice_. She seemed so appeased there, as if she was comfortable there, for what seemed like the first time.

It was nice, not having to argue when we were alone together, to be able to have light hearted conversation over dinner. Something about this newfound serenity between us had put me at ease as well, and I wondered if it was just the last few moments of life I was trying to hold onto.

I watched the blonde from across the table push her food around her plate with her chopsticks, smiling an honest smile. This was the Jillian others found so difficult to resist, this was the good side.

I was in the white again.

/

"Oh, it`s so rare for you to bring friends over," Mother sat up in her hospital bed, and I rushed to her side, gently willing her to lie back down. I could feel Yusuke`s confusion as he watched the situation I was in unfold before him. Surely he was confused, as he knew I was a demon, and demons did not have human mothers.

Elise had waited outside of the hospital room, not wanting to visit Shiori when she had been set out to arrest the woman`s only son for stealing the treasure of the underworld.

I introduced Yusuke to her as a friend from school as I pealed an apple for her to eat, holding onto our last little moment together. I was willing to tell the woman just about anything if it would make her happy. She`d always been concerned about my social life, even with Jillian hanging around to keep me company. It was good for her to believe that others cared about my existence.

Yusuke watched nervously as she fussed over me for a few moments more before we headed up to the roof so that I could explain my conditions regarding the Forlorn Hope. Elise was at Yusuke`s side as soon as we left my mother to rest in her room, as if he was a younger brother she was instructed to look after. She looked at him the same as she did Jillian.

"Shuichi is my alias in the Ningenkai," I explained for Yusuke, as Elise had already discovered who I really was,

"That woman is my mother… sort of. My father passed away years ago. For fifteen years, she has brought me up while I have deceived her."

Yusuke`s face was grave, I acknowledged the confidence he and Elise were radiating. They were impressionable to say the least. Perhaps Spirit World had done something right.

"Sorry, I`m not following," Yusuke confessed, confusion apparent on his face. Elise stood with her back to the both of us, not really interested in hearing what she already knew to be true.

"My truest name is Youko, I was a fox." It was the first time I`d explained it to another human, the words felt new saying them. Even demons would have a hard time believing that the great Youko Kurama had buried himself in the Ningenkai. Hiei had even allowed himself a hearty chuckle over my circumstances.

"My profession is to disarm wards and disengage locks to steal ancient treasures and weapons. Fifteen years ago, I was pursued by a highly skilled hunter, and seriously injured. I then escaped into the Ningenkai with a spirit body."  
"Being helpless then, I was unable to transform or possess anybody, so I was forced to lay dormant in a lady`s still forming fetus. If I could bear it for another ten years, I would recover, and my flesh would completely become that of a demon`s. I decided when that happened, I would escape without a trace."

Elise had turned to give me a careful glance now, unsure what to make of the current situation as I had stuck around much longer than those ten years I had promised myself.

"I take it something went wrong." The detective observed, and I nodded, continuing,

"My mother fell ill. I know it might sound foolish, but I couldn`t leave her."

I paused, remembering the day Shiori had impulsively rushed to save me from falling on broken dishes. She still bore the scars on her arms to this day.

"…Considering what she had done for me."

"That`s when they appeared," I said, referring to my accomplices, "Hiei had somehow tracked me down, needing my expertise, and I had recalled the powers of the Forlorn Hope."

I looked down at my reflection in the mirror, expressionless, as I looked upon my human face. I had never admit these feelings for Shiori to anyone before. I was considered a "Momma`s Boy" by Jillian before, but other than that, no one knew that the grip Shiori Minamino had on me was as strong as it was.

"As a demon myself, it is unthinkable to have fostered such emotions, it was when she fell ill that I realized… that I had always considered her as my mother."

I looked up from the mirror and into Elise`s cold and accusing sapphire eyes,

"She won`t last for another month."

I watched Elise`s expression soften sympathetically, proving that she was of Jillian`s faint-hearted kin.

"And I want to use this mirror to save her. That`s my only wish now. Once my wish is fulfilled, I will return the mirror to you."

"You`re going to save her life and ruin it at the _same time_."

I felt my face go numb with shock at Elise`s venomous words. The last thing I wanted was to make Shiori suffer in any way.

"You would trade the life of her only son. No loving parent wants their child to die before they do. That`s how the Ningenkai works, Kurama."

"She won`t be lonely," I countered, "She has Hatanaka-san."

"Hatanaka-san, who is about to be appointed President of Communications for my father`s company."

I was speechless at these words, not sure of what to say. She elaborated, an attempt to convince me that what I was doing wouldn`t end as valiantly as I`d tried to make it sound,

"There`s no way to know for sure if Hatanaka will stay sane with all of that money. After my father received that position at Nippon, he left my mother and her mental illness far behind him. He separated Jillian and I and moved out to a suburb closer to Tokyo."

I realized that she wasn`t telling me this to threaten me. She told me this out of bitterness for other feelings that were buried somewhere inside.

"I`m afraid I will not be swayed on my decision," I warned the girl, "Shiori is going to live, and she will move on. I`ve lived far longer than she ever will, even as a healthy human being."

Yusuke grew uncomfortable as Elise and I shared a bitter stare down. Her head held high in the glow of the fading sunlight, washing over her pale skin and hair and bathing her in the red-orange glow. The blue in her eyes never faded in the dim light, only intensified as she stared so intently back at me.

Though bound and determined to wait the stare-down out, I had to dismiss it when the nurse appeared on the rooftop, frantic and breathless.

"Shuichi! Come quick—it`s your mother!"


	5. Tight Lipped

I leaned forward, gazing back at my reflection in the Forlorn Hope. Elise and Yusuke watched with grim expressions, having tried to convince me not to offer the mirror my life in return for my mother`s health.

"Forlorn Hope," I called to the mirror, "I ask for you to wake from your sleep and hear my plea. Reflect my greatest desire so that you can make it true."

Images of Shiori flickered through my head, her voice ringing in my ears. Days from the past when she was well, when she used to smile. Not to hide the pain, but because she was genuinely happy.

I watched as her face appeared in the glass below me.

"The happiness of this woman, is that what you desire?" It verified, and I felt the energy of the mirror encasing me in its death grip. Despite the front I`d put on, I was shaking with fright. There was no going back, not even fear would keep me from saving my mother.

"It is." I answered, sealing my fate.

"Eh-Hey!" Yusuke shouted, voice gravelly and irritated, "Can`t you hold on a second so we can work things out? I mean, there`s gotta be some other way to do this!" He tried to reason as he shouted over the piercing noises coming from the mirror. I felt my body growing weak as the mirror proceeded to literally suck the life out of my body.

"No, there is not." I replied to the boy. Had there been, I would have already figured it out. I knew Shiori wouldn`t be happy losing her son, but I would never be able to live in peace if I had not done everything in my power to save her life.

She would have done the same for me.

She already had.

"To grant this wish, you must give your life. Is that what you desire?" The voice in the mirror rung in my ears, and I could not answer fast enough.

"If that will save my mother`s life, then yes, I do."

"Then your desire shall be fulfilled."

I was blinded by the light reflected in the glass as the Forlorn Hope took possession of my energy, draining me of all of my life.

_For you, Mother._

I grimaced as I felt nausea race over me, as if I was being bled to death.

Bled to death, that was how Jillian had almost died, wasn`t it?

I was broken from these final passing thoughts as Yusuke snarled, diving into the static surrounding me and allowing the mirror to absorb his energy as well as my own. I felt my mouth gape incredulously up at him as he did so. He had no place to act on such a whim.

"What are you doing?" I struggled to manage the four words.

"Yusuke!" Elise scolded from somewhere behind the two of us, but the detective ignored her cry.

"Hey Mirror Guy!" Yusuke shouted over the static emanating from the Forlorn Hope, "Can you hear me? I want you to take my life instead, that way Kurama can live and still get his wish, is that right?"

"That doesn`t make sense," I had felt the drain on my energy wavering as Yusuke offered his life to the mirror, "It`s _my_ wish."

"Well it doesn`t make sense for you to rescue your mom just so she can spend her whole life mourning the death of her son!"

The boy looked up at me with sincerity in his wide, brown eyes as he spoke, fighting to keep the pain on his face from showing as the mirror drained him as well,

"I`ve seen that once before," The pain was imminent on his face regardless as a memory surfaced in his mind, "And I don`t wanna see it again."

I watched him carefully. This boy was incredibly noble for a Junior High student, and a human at that. Surely he wasn`t of sane mind to throw his life out for that of a criminal.

I wanted to open my mouth, tell him to back off but there was no time. The mirror fulfilled the desire, enveloping the both of us with it`s light, the kiss of death. The light at the end of the tunnel faded, and I went sailing into the blackness.

* * *

**TIGHT LIPPED  
****For forgiveness, you could always pray that the sickness**—******it could go away  
**—**Lights**,****** they blind me  
********At the alter**—******would you pay the price? Would you give your**—******would you give your life?**

"Where have _you_ been?" Jillian appeared in my doorway as I pressed the switch on the desk lamp, illuminating my bloodied uniform, cursing myself for doing so afterwards as she took in the sight of my mangled body.

"Shuichi, what the _fu-_" I bolted forward, impulsively clamping my wounded hand over the girl`s mouth before she could wake Shiori, pulling her into the room and shutting the door behind us.

Yes, Shiori, who was happy, healthy, and sleeping peacefully down the hall from my bedroom, thanks to the help of Yusuke Urameshi. The Forlorn Hope had been inspired to let the both of us live when the boy offered up his life for mine and my mother`s.

Things had seemed normal for the last few days, until I had thrown myself in front of the wrath of Hiei only an hour before, allowing him to impale me with the Shadow Sword in order to defend Yusuke and aid him in getting the third stolen artifact back.

Jillian looked down at the hand that I was holding over her lips and let out a muffled cry of disgust in reaction to the blood staining my fingers. Her hands flew over mine, and she desperately tried to pry me off of her.

"Don`t wake Mother!" I hissed into her ear as she struggled. After letting my words sink in, she looked up at me through narrowed eyes and composed herself, breathing sharply through her nose as she glared.

When I removed my hand from her mouth, she drew the crook of her arm over her face, wiping at any traces of blood that I might have left on her face with the sleeve of her pajamas.

"Thanks for contaminating me with your weird fucking HIV-ridden platelets." These words stemmed from her fear and hatred of germs, nothing else. Jillian and I had been getting along much better over the past few days, until this little incident. Surely I wasn`t in the black because of that. Words were more important to her in that aspect.

"Why are you acting so _shady_?" She demanded, folding her arms across her chest and holding her head high, trying to appear more severe than she actually was.

"Don`t you have a playing test you should be practicing for?" I pointed out to her, a horrid attempt to change the subject, as if she would even consider practicing violin at that hour. Her face contorted into an exasperated expression, irritated at my struggle to divert the attention from myself.

"How are you standing like that? Shouldn`t we go to the hospital or something?" She bent down to inspect the stab wound Hiei had given me earlier that evening.

"I won`t tell Shiori, if that`s what you`re worried about, but we should probably get that checked out, right? I mean it looks pretty bad…"

"That won`t be necessary, it`s not as bad as it looks. Just a scrape, really." I backed away from her, turning to the closet to get a change of clothes.

"Shuichi…" She breathed shakily as she exhaled my name, hands flying to her mouth and eyes wide with shock. How could I have been so careless to forget that there was a rather large bloodstain on the back of my shirt as well?

"You were stabbed clean through, and you`re still…"

"Jill," I stepped back towards her, and she only backed away from me as if she were a frightened animal. Fear was imminent on her face as she continued to stare in horror at me, as if she was finally seeing me as the monster I really was. A shame, as we had only recently been starting to get along with each other.

"Please calm down, I can explain," I was about to tell her that I had gotten jumped, something believable, but she shook her head and put her hand on the door,

"I don`t know if I should hear..." Her words blurred together as she spoke rapidly, and her fear of me was misplaced, as she had always initiated every spat between us in the past. I shook my head, holding my soiled hand out in front of me to get her to wait.

"You don`t want to know?" This was peculiar, as Jillian always wanted to know. It was unlike her to deny this sort of thing, unless she really didn`t care. Maybe she didn`t. Who knew with her, really.

"You`ll only lie," She countered, giving me a knowing look as she turned the handle to let herself out, "Shady guys like you don`t tell the truth."

"I don`t want to keep anything from you." I admitted, "But I`m afraid that you would be better off not knowing." These words tempted the girl, and I saw amusement dance over her grey eyes as thoughts turned in her head, debating whether she should pry or not.

"Christ, you make it sound like you`re in the mafia." She grumbled, looking me over once more,

"Are you sure you don`t need a doctor?"

I nodded in confirmation, "I`ll be just fine, thank you."

"Okay... Goodnight." Jillian frowned at me before letting herself out.

What strange behavior, I thought to myself as I bandaged the still-raw wound Hiei had given me. Any typical human would have pressed for answers, wanted to wake Shiori and take me to see a doctor. Then again, Jillian wasn`t typical. Maybe she did think I was involved in some sort of gang activity. I snorted a laugh at the thought.

"_I won`t tell Shiori."_ Her words repeated in my head, and it occurred to me that Jillian had a firm respect for privacy. Her secrets were out in the open for everyone to fuss over, and she didn`t appreciate it. She was protecting me in her own way, valuing secrets over my well being. It would have been a foolish move, had I been completely human. Fortunately, Jillian`s respect for my privacy was a blessing.

There were no further questions the next day on our walk to school. Jillian chattered idly on about how she would have to sit in the Dean`s office later that evening. Something about being punished over taping sheet music to the ceiling during orchestra sectionals. She had convinced the entire first violin section to practice while laying on the floor. Her reasoning?

The song was titled _Skysong_.

I was still a little surprised she hadn`t even hinted at what had happened the night before. I wasn`t sure if I should have been worried for her at that point, but if she really didn`t seem to care, then did it matter?

I was still debating on whether it was a mistake to not erase her memory.

"Suzuki-sensei threw a tizzy fit, so I don`t know if… Shuichi? Shu?" I felt her slender fingers graze my shoulder as she walked beside me.

I looked up from the ground and met her slate eyes before smiling,

"I`m listening." I reassured her as she carefully looked me over, eyes wandering down to my stomach before rising back to my face. She smiled up at me, almost sympathetically. Jillian felt sorry for me, whatever she assumed was going on in my life. It was for the best that she kept silent on the matter. Soon enough she would be convinced that I was going to be fine and then maybe move on.

I decided that I had nothing to be concerned about.

/

Six months had passed since that night, and Jillian hadn`t uttered a word about it. It was as if she had completely forgotten. The only thing that seemed to have changed was the time she spent around Shiori and I. She had quit being so anxious to get out of the house, and even willingly spent time there.

"It`s strange not having Jillian-kun here." Shiori mentioned to me at dinner one evening when it had been just the two of us, "She`s been around so much lately."

"She`s only been gone a day, surely you don`t miss her already."

She looked up at me from across the table with her usual, sweet smile.

"She seems to be getting much better. I know that`s a good thing," She sighed, her eyes drifting down, overwhelming with sadness.  
"What is it, Mother?" I egged her to confess her true feelings, as they seemed to trouble her.

"Oh, it`s silly," She tried to wave it off, but I continued to stare back at her in attempt to get her to profess.

"Well, I know this is wrong," Shiori shook her head, rolling her eyes as if she couldn`t believe what she was saying, "I`m happy that Jillian-kun seems to be better, but I just…" She looked back up at me, pursing her lips for a moment. I watched as one of her tear ducts glimmered suspiciously, threatening to leak.

"…Wish she would just stay here. She`s all alone in that apartment..." I watched as Shiori unfolded her napkin from her lap before dabbing at the corners of her eyes, sniffling a bit.

"Don`t cry, mother,"

"I`m sorry, Shuichi, I`m just really emotional for some reason," She continued to dry her eyes with the napkin, and I slid my hand across the table and wrapped my fingers around her own delicate hand. It was understanding that Shiori felt this way, after caring for Jillian for so long.

"She has Elise, you know," I tried to comfort her, "She isn`t alone,"

"Elise isn`t an adult, honey," She countered, sighing, "I just worry too much."

I nodded, yes, Mother did worry too much for the girl. It was hard for her not to after seeing how reckless Jillian could be, as Jillian`s father had trusted Shiori with his daughter for the last few years. She excused herself from the table, heading upstairs to calm down.

I had just begun to clear the dinner dishes when the back door opened, and Jillian stepped inside, soaking from the rain.

"You just missed dinner," I called over my shoulder to her, "Are you hungry?"

She didn`t reply as she pulled her rain boots off, letting me wonder if she was feeling well. Jillian never purposely ignored someone unless she was holding a grudge against them.

"Jill?" I pressed, turning off the water. She pulled her hood back on her jacket and avoided looking at me.

I noticed the girl looked rather tired, and moved as if she had just punched the alarm clock. The most alarming thing about her presence in that moment had to have been the demonic energy coming from her.

I pulled myself away from the dishes to take a better look at her, taking a hold of her arm as she tried to walk past me. She jerked to a stop, and slowly turned on me, looking up with dull, lifeless eyes. I noticed a raised, red bump on her neck, which was undoubtedly the bite of a Makai insect.

"…Let go." She whispered, attempting to pull herself away from me. I had to use more force to keep the girl anchored than I normally would have.

"Jillian, do you know who I am?"

Her eyes drifted to the floor, her expression remaining blank. Instead of speaking, she reached up and attempted to shove me away from her. When this proved useless, she dug her nails into my chest and tried to push harder.

I needed to get her out of the house before she destroyed something.

I pulled her out the back door and into the downpour, towards the side of the house where the citronella grass was growing to a full five feet this time of year.

Fusing it with my you-ki would easy-getting the girl to eat it would not be, especially in her state.

I slipped the infused citronella grass into my mouth, chewing it thoroughly before letting go of Jillian so that I could efficiently land a blow strong enough to stun her. Before she could come to her senses, I dragged her up to me by her shirt collar, tilting her face upwards.

I pressed her open mouth to mine, forcing the chewed citronella into hers as quickly as I could. Had I been forceful enough, she would have swallowed most of it before coming to. If I was lucky, the girl wouldn`t remember any of this when she was well again.

Something told me that Jillian wouldn`t consider eating chewed grass like a baby bird in a freezing rainstorm a good time.

She buckled at the knee, her body repelling the demonic energy inside of her. I caught her before she could fall, and watched as the abrasion on her neck turned from an inflamed red to her natural skin tone. Jillian would recover.

Almost as soon as the you-ki had faded from the area, another familiar energy appeared from behind me, dropping from the oak in yard next door and over the fence, into our rosebushes.

"Kurama," Hiei stepped forward as I still held Jillian`s now feverish body in my arms,

"What do you know about the Four Saint Beasts?"

I straightened, surprised to find him here after our last encounter in the warehouse. The last thing I needed was the fire demon breathing down my neck in my own back yard, with Jillian and my mother inside. My stomach had completely healed long since, but it was still an ill opportune moment for Hiei to take his revenge on me.

"Why the sudden interest?" I asked, clutching Jillian closer as the rain continued to pour down on us in the dark. I needed to get her inside before she caught something more serious than a cold, but was hesitant to allow Hiei under my roof if he still bore harsh feelings.

"Relax, fox," He stepped closer, "I have no interest in vengeance, nor do I want to hurt your _precious _family." His words were condescending, but other than Hiei`s typical personality, I couldn`t detect much of a threat.

"I`m surprised the Spirit World hasn`t sought you out and groveled for your assistance in wiping out the Beasts as well."

"I haven`t heard from Spirit World lately," I didn`t want to bring up the fact that my punishment had been lifted due to good behavior. I was still a dog of the Reikai, but they had yet to contact me. I could tell Hiei was slightly irked at these words, as he knew his punishment was far more severe than mine.

"Maybe you should take an interest, as they are responsible for manipulating your brat."

The Makai Whistle, I thought to myself as I looked over Jillian once more. It was the only instrument capable of controlling humans from beyond the barrier between worlds, and had been missing since the Four Saint Beasts had been detained to their castle.

She must have been a target due to the chemical imbalance in her brain. The insects fed off of the minds of the depressed and emotionally weak, both symptoms of Jillian`s disorder.

Shiori had been in the bathroom when I`d trudged up the stairs, dripping, with an unconscious girl in my arms and a demon in tow, making it easy to quietly slip past the bathroom and down the hall. Hiei had waited in my bedroom as I went to change Jillian out of her damp clothes, a tad revolted at my _weakness_ for my _human slaves_.

As soon as I had shut the bedroom door behind me, the girl was awake and struggling to get out of my embrace. I let her down, and she let out a gasp of air, as if she`d been holding in her breath for months.

I stood, slightly jilted and confused. She`d been awake the whole time?

Jillian wiped at her mouth with her wet sleeve before pulling the soaked jacket over her head, revealing the damp garment she was wearing beneath.

"Get out," Her voice was eerily calm. She looked back at me with a disgusted look on her face before pulling her shirt off. I only stood, stunned. Didn`t she want to know what had happened? Wasn`t the girl curious at all to know any answers?

"Jillian, I can explain why-"

"Out!" She snarled, pointing to the door before reaching up to wring her wet hair out.

She had me completely baffled this time. First the lack of concern for the gaping hole in my stomach, and now this. Jillian was truly the most unpredictable human I had ever met.

When I didn`t budge, she walked over to the door and opened it herself. We both winced when we saw Shiori standing in her bathrobe behind it, eyes wide.

"Oh-I`m sorry!" Mother panicked, holding her hands up in front of her face to cover the deep red in her cheeks.

I had only been embarrassed a few times in my human life, none of which were nearly as humiliating as being caught by my human mother behind a closed door with Jillian Beckett standing in her underwear, soaking wet.

"He was just leaving." Jillian explained in a dangerously sharp tone, and she placed a hand on my back before shoving me out into the hallway with my mother, slamming the door behind me.

"Is everything alright, Shuichi?" Mother asked as I stared at the door, desperate to know what the girl in the room was thinking at that moment.

I turned back to her with an apologetic smile,

"Yes, mother. Jillian just got caught in the rain, she isn`t feeling well." I lied, trying to pull the wool over my mother`s eyes yet again. She frowned, concerned for the girl,

"I think it`s best if we left her alone for right now. She`s in quite a foul mood." I pointed out, trying to distract the woman from a bitter encounter with the provoked girl.

"Of course," Shiori laughed nervously, as even she had witnessed Jillian`s wrath before. She smiled at me, giving me a wary second glance before disappearing into her bedroom.

I retreated to my own bedroom as well, looking down the hall to Jillian`s door once more, still curious to know what she thought had just happened. Maybe she had just woken up, and hadn`t heard anything.

Of course, this assumption was diminished when Hiei spoke up from across the room, standing at the window with his arms folded across his chest. Amusement was apparent on his face.

"Your human thinks you`re involved in a cult."

* * *

**Could have updated this hours earlier, but I kept getting distracted by hardcore dancing to Sad Sad City. **

**xoxo**

**Holly.**


	6. Skeptics & True Believers

Jillian turned cold again, shying away from me when we ran into each other at school. She stopped hanging around so much, longing to leave the house every chance that she could get again. I could tell Mother was hurt by her actions, but it wasn`t Shiori that Jillian was avoiding. It was me, and the fact that Shiori was being punished for something I did wasn`t exactly setting with me well.

On the off chance Jillian was forced to stay over the next couple of weeks, she locked herself in her room at night and rose half an hour earlier to avoid walking to school with me. On the first morning she`d slept in, I took full advantage of her tardiness and served her coffee, sitting across from her at the kitchen table. Shiori had already left for work bright and early, leaving the two of us completely alone.

"Good morning, Jillian." I greeted, sipping from my own cup. I noticed the girl didn`t touch the mug, only stared at me with her narrowed, grey eyes.

"Something wrong, dear?" I asked, a little out of character. I never used terms of endearment, but I couldn`t resist playing with the girl. I noticed her eye left eye twitch as she broke her stare with me, cheeks turning rouge at the name.

"Everything`s grand, _darling_," Was her retort as she drummed her nails on the table. I wondered briefly if commenting on her table manners would set her off or not. I decided that any form of emotional portrayal could prove entertaining after a week of silence from the girl. Even I found myself missing Jillian`s antics. She did spice up our lives a little with her playful personality, that is, when you were in the white.

"You know, it`s considered rude to tap your fingers impatiently on the dinner table."

She snorted in disbelief at my comment, locked and loaded with a response that I`d been hoping for,

"It`s considered _rude_ to drug a family friend and force feed her pureed grass." She accused, intense eyes meeting my lighthearted gaze. I smiled in reply to these words, finally, she was going to talk.

"I never drugged you," I countered as she pushed herself away from the table, reaching for her untouched coffee cup,

"You know Shu," I watched her dump the coffee down the drain and set the mug in the sink,

"If you wanted to kiss me, you should have just asked." She turned, buttoning the front of her uniform,

"You wouldn`t be the first to beg for my affection." She winked, and fled the kitchen with a spring in her step. Though I was certain it wasn`t from a happy-go-lucky mood, but more of an attempt to taunt me and change the subject.

She grabbed her violin from the den and slipped her shoes on before slamming the front door behind her roughly, allowing the noise to speak the unspoken words that I knew she`d been thinking,

_Keep your distance._

* * *

**SKEPTICS & TRUE BELIEVERS**

**I ran through the Garden of Evil, with hastened steps I pull away.**

**Why am I running if you keep slowing? So I hesitate.**

**Oh, is this really what you want from me?********  
**

"How was school today?" Shiori asked as she finally seated herself at the table with her dinner. We were eating rather late, as Shiori had just gotten home from the office at nine. Grey eyes flickered across the table to meet mine, a coy smile curled on Jillian`s lips, as she knew I hadn`t been at school that day.

What she didn`t know was that her sister hadn`t gone to school that day either. Elise and her two classmates had gone to retrieve Hiei`s younger sister, Yukina, from a greedy man with demon acquaintances after being held captive for years.

"Shuichi, why don`t you start?" Jillian`s voice was thick with daunting as she grinned at Shiori, who was completely unaware of the situation between us.

"Ladies first, Jillian." I retorted before shoving steamed vegetables in my mouth.

"How was orchestra, dear?" Shiori smiled politely, leaning in Jill`s direction. I had to hold back the laughter, as I knew Jillian had skipped the rehearsal to smoke with an upperclassman boy under the bridge over the canal. I could smell it on her when she`d walked in the door.

"It was cancelled, Suzuki-sensei went home with a bug." She lied, smoothing over any other questions that Shiori may have had and then asked,

"How is the serum working?"

"Oh!" Shiori jumped, grinning as she rolled her sleeve up to show Jillian and I the scars on her arms from the accident in the kitchen a few years before. They were long since faded, and the discoloring was much less severe than it had been.

"It`s wonderful," Shiori gushed to Jillian, "I`m so lucky you know what to buy from those counters, Jill, I just feel so bombarded when I go to the department stores."

"Well, I do my homework," Jillian winked at her again, "Your arms do look much better."

"Your turn." Her eyes narrowed to me once more from across the table, her voice still light and playful. I knew she was fuming behind it, irritated that I had more time to think of a believable lie than she had. Her irritation only increased as I recited the entire lesson plan we`d gone through that day in class, probably better than she could have—and she had actually been there.

When I`d finished helping Shiori with the dishes, I thought—thought that I would be able to go upstairs and tend to the stomach wound I`d gotten only a week and a half before, thanks to the mission to Maze`s Castle that Koenma had sent Yusuke, Kuwabara, Hiei, Elise and I on previously. Of course, Jillian foiled these plans for me.

"Shuichi, will you walk Jillian home?" Shiori knocked lightly on my door as I had just unbuttoned my shirt to re-wrap my bandages.

"Don`t bother him, Shiori," I heard Jillian`s voice from further down the hallway, "I`m sure a long day at school must have him all tuckered out."

I didn`t let her words irritate me, as she had played those games all the time.

"It`s too dangerous for you to go that far by yourself at night, dear,"

"I`m fine, really." She passed the door, her footsteps padding down the stairs. Shiori hesitated as I knew she was still hovering behind my door.

"I`ll be out in a minute, Mother," I called back to her, buttoning my shirt up again, trying not to roll my eyes, but the teenage boy inside couldn`t resist. I wouldn`t be part human if Jillian didn`t annoy me every once in a while.

The girl was already halfway down the block when I`d left the house to "accompany" her.

"Go back home, Boy Wonder," Her new nick name wasn`t very appealing to me, but at least she was on speaking terms again. Sort of.

"Shiori would be in fits if I were to do that," I pointed out to her, "May I ask the sudden need to travel all the way across town on a school night?"

"No, you may not." She snapped back at me, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jacket.

"It wouldn`t have to do anything with me, would it?"

The girl halted, allowing me to catch up to her. She side-glanced at me cautiously before snorting and turning away, tilting her chin upwards so she could further raise her nose in the air.

"Please, you don`t scare me."

Her eyes wandered upwards and she looked up towards the sky, which was empty of the stars, illuminated by the city skyline in the distance.

I bit the words back with my teeth, but I couldn`t resist to see the reaction on her face when I uttered—

"You should be."

She let out a laugh at these words, an arrogant air washing over her as she held her side and gasped for breath through her giggle fit.

"Please!" She choked out, "Shuichi Minamino, I`m so terrified!"

She turned to me, walking a few steps ahead and backwards as she quickened her pace to keep ahead of me while she continued to tease and banter,

"Please, Momma`s Boy, don`t try to hypnotize me again! I don`t think I could eat anymore ferns!" She placed the back of her hand against her forehead and mock-fainted as she went on,

"Someone help! Hide the children, he`s a menace!" She called louder, and I noticed a light inside a house flicker on as we passed by.

"Hush, Jillian," I warned her, "Someone`s going to file a noise complaint."

"Yes, please call the police!" She only raised her voice at this comment.

"Jillian, stop that."

"_Stop that_." She repeated in a nasal tone.

The girl stopped abruptly, and I halted, barely inches from her. She stood on the sidewalk, hands on her waist, head cocked upwards to look me in the eye.

"Fight me."

"Don`t be ridiculous," I stepped around her, only to have her not move an inch from the place she`d been standing.

"Sissy baby." She accused, inspecting her manicure as she folded the other arm across her chest.  
"Probably scared. I don`t blame you. I am known to be pretty crafty."

As the girl bragged on about her reputation of being the number one punk at Meiou, I mulled over what easy tactic I could use to scare her into speeding this walk along so that I could return home. I figured my options were pretty open, as no matter how unnatural of an offense I used, she would probably deny that it was anything but a fluke.

I focused my youki on the vines climbing along the chain link fence next to her on the sidewalk as she continued to chatter on.

"Anyway, you`re probably nothing but a big wimp without the rest of your weirdo cult group. Do you sacrifice little animals? That`s so fu-"

She was cut short as a vine wrapped around her mouth and pulled her against the fence. I couldn`t help but chortle as she stood wide-eyed, attempting to pull the plant from her face. It had been rather insensitive on my part, but watching her struggle against the fence made me double over in a similar fit of laughter that Jillian had displayed earlier.

I let my focus on the vine slip and Jillian released herself from it, gasping for air and pulling her hands to her face. For someone that had been so confident in not being afraid, she certainly seemed frightened after that. She looked over at me with wide, suspicious eyes.

Without a word, she walked past, not taking her eyes away from me until I was out of her peripheral.

"Jill, you can`t think that was my fault." I had messed up, she knew too much now. There was no way she could deny what had just happened, even with her close proximity to the fence, there was no way that could have happened naturally.

She kept walking, picking up her pace and keeping her weight on the balls of her feet so that she could move faster. There was no reply as she hustled down the walkway.

I watched her motivated by fear to keep up the fast pace as I followed by several feet behind. A safe following distance. She looked back every once in a while.

And then she stopped.

She turned.

And she jogged back to me.

Fingers wrapped around my collar and she pulled me down to her level, glaring almost too viciously for such soft features.

"No," She scowled as her voice took on a threatening tone, "You know what? I don`t want to know how you did it," She whispered, and I cocked my head in amusement at the girl. I had stricken one too many nerves. I could smell the fear in her radiating, though she did her damnedest to portray herself as a fearless attack dog.

"But I do want to know _why_. Why are you doing this? I thought we were okay for a little while and then you started dragging me into your weird, Japanese-lesbian cult rituals and I. Want. Out. Of. It."

"Japanese-lesbian cult rituals?" I reiterated, Jillian`s vocabulary was never boring, to say the least.

"Why do you hate me, Minamino?" She shook me in her grasp a little, gaze faltering under mine. Hate her? I hardly hated the girl. I didn`t need to waste my energy on hatred, of all things. Perhaps a little annoyed here and there.

"But I don`t hate you."

"Then why are you harassing me?" She shoved me backwards, and pain shot through my abdomen as I caught my balance quickly. She noticed the look on my face and the arm that instinctively wrapped around my stomach.

Eyes narrowing again, the girl jumped to more conclusions inside of her head. Honestly, at that point the truth was far more believable than anything she could have possibly be coming up with on her own.

"Is your stomach still fucked up?" She demanded to know, tapping her foot impatiently,

"I knew we should have gone to a doctor. God, you are so stubborn."

Said the girl that tried to kill herself only two years prior in Junior Highschool. Before I knew what she was up to, the girl was unlatching the buttons on the shirt I`d been wearing.

"Oh my God," She stepped back, covering her mouth with her hand,

"Shuichi …why?" Were the only words she could stammer through her fingers.

"Jillian, please don`t,"

"Who is doing this to you?!" She shouted, not able to tear her eyes from the bandages wrapped around my torso. I didn`t exactly know how to answer the question once she had actually begun to pry into my business. She awaited my answer with, round, fearful eyes.

But before I could find the words, she shook her head and turned away for the last time that evening, sprinting off even faster than before.

Buttoning my shirt, I paced after slowly, as Mother wouldn`t be expecting me for quite sometime.

I could see the inside of Jillian`s apartment from the ground behind the building, six floors up. The wall of the living room and kitchen facing outwards was made of glass, and had been brightly lit by the overhead lights and the television set. The girl paced the floor, and I assumed that she was the only one home. She hadn`t lied about Elise being home, as she had expected her sister to be there. I knew she wouldn`t let Shiori know.

I felt a tinge of concern as I watched her pacing her living room from the courtyard between complexes. Was she really safe all alone? Could she be trusted with herself?

I watched the girl lean onto the kitchen counter, cradling her head in her hands. Why did I care? Hadn`t she been a nuisance to me anyway?

* * *

"Hey Minamino, where`s Jill?" Maya turned to me, gesturing to Jillian`s empty desk which sat directly in front of my own.

"No idea." I answered almost mechanically. I really had no idea where Jill was. If she didn`t want to be found, she made sure no one could find her.

"Really?" Maya asked, "Hideki-chan told me that Naoko-chan heard from Muroka who heard from Joujo that you two were fighting outside his house last night."

Her words made my head buzz for a moment as I put them together. I should have known the kind of gossip that went around between Jillian and I at the High School was well maintained.

"We didn`t fight." I informed, fiddling with the pencil atop the notebook I`d opened.

"Really? Maybe that _other_ rumor is true…" Her words diminuend down to a whisper as she spoke, eyes shifting to the side, suspicious.

"What rumor?" My interest was caught, though disgraceful that I was taunted by the smut that was passed around by the human adolescents in the halls. If it concerned Jillian, it may as well have concerned me as well. It had been a while since I`d been let in on what was really being said, anyway.

"Just the one about Jill whoring around." Nagasawa, who had been eavesdropping, inserted herself in the conversation. Maya immediately bristled at the comment, and opened her mouth to defend Jillian, who wasn`t there to speak for herself.

"Jillian is not, Nagasawa! You`re just jealous."

"That`s why she went home with Nadare last night, hmm?"

The electricity between the two was tangible, and the rest of the class had silenced themselves to overhear, ready to stir the pot even more than it had already been.

"But she didn`t go home with Nadare last night," I vouched for the girl, and everyone turned their head to look at me as I so brashly opened my mouth and delivered the words that I would soon regret to have spoken aloud,

"Jillian went home with me."

The room seemed taken back for a moment, and I looked back to see Nagasawa staring off into the distance, mouth hanging wide open as if I`d just struck the girl across the face.

Sadly, the drama didn`t end there.

"And Jillian makes it to her seat before the bull dyke history teacher notices she`s late!" A joyful voice called out upon entering the classroom, sliding the door shut behind her after announcing the personal victory. No one gave Jillian the time of day, still staring at me as if I`d just thrown up my own lung onto the desk.

"Is it true?" Maya finally tore her eyes from me to look at her best friend, who smoothed her skirt before taking a seat before me.

"What`s true?" She asked, looking back at the rest of the still staring students.

"Are you and Minamino sleeping together?" Nagasawa`s nasally voice made Jillian flinch slightly in her seat, before she swiveled around to look at me in disgust.

But then the expression disappeared as her eyes met mine, and a mischievous expression replaced it instead. Sliding her slate eyes to her left, she directed the look to Nagasawa, who had obviously taken my statement rather personally.

The way that Jillian`s lips had curled made me nervous, as I could read the thoughts whirring past in her head as she blinked back and forth between Nagasawa and I.

"Shuichi, you told?" Jillian whined, faking embarrassment as she twirled a lock of blonde hair around her finger. I shook my head, about to explain that wasn`t what I had meant, eyes pleading with Jillian to end the madness. Of course, the girl wouldn`t ever oblige to those terms. I could my feel my face flushing, hormones running high. The thousand year old demon was cackling somewhere inside, finding the situation just as amusing as the girl did.

"Well, I guess the secret`s out now." Jillian continued to feign embarrassment of the lie that she`d continued to drastically skew out of proportion.

"Jillian, I only said that-"

I was cut off by the girl swiveling back around in her seat, giving me a dangerous glance, as to not interfere with the schemes she had been silently plotting to herself.

"Oh, I forgive you," She smiled sweetly before leaning over the desk, touching her nose to mine,

"Couldn`t stay mad, not with those eyes."

And with these words, forced her lips onto mine and began to kiss me in a way that fifteen year old girls should not know how to kiss. Whooping and hollering erupted from the surrounding student as Jillian invaded my personal space, nearly climbing over the desk to deepen her kiss. She slipped, catching herself by placing her hand on my upper thigh.

The second most embarrassing moment of my life happened that day as I tried to repress the hardening between my legs as Jillian Beckett forced herself onto me.

To my relief, the door slammed open, the cheering was cut off, and the history teacher barged into the classroom, jaw dropping as she put together the sight of Jillian straddling me in front of the class of students.

"What is—Minamino! Beckett!"

Finally, the girl was pulled off of me by the collar of her blazer as I gratefully inhaled a breath of air after what seemed to be a full minute without oxygen.

Jillian and I spent the rest of the day in the Dean`s office.


	7. Benny & Joon

"Would you quit pouting?"

I looked over to Jillian, who was sitting next to me inside the Dean`s office, waiting for him to return from his errands. We had been waiting for a while, and I was growing impatient of sitting and missing out on my classes. I had never let a human get under skin before, but Jillian was scaling the walls that held my capacity for nonsense at an astounding rate with her last stunt in homeroom.

"I wouldn`t have anything to pout about if it weren`t for that trick you pulled back there."

My tone had a sharp edge, and I knew she could feel the tension radiating from my words. She only rolled her eyes, replying,

"Dear God, take the tampon out of your asshole already. You aren`t going to get in trouble."

"You think I`m concerned about getting in trouble?"

"Well, if you aren`t, I don`t see why there`s a problem." She sunk further down into her seat, twisting a lock of hair around her finger, eyes drifting slowly around the room, taking in the details of the office I had never had the pleasure of being in until that day.

"Do you make a habit out of molesting every one of our peers?"

She snorted as she attempted to hold her laughter back, letting a few giggles bleed through the hand she used to cup over her lips.

"I`m sorry, I didn`t think you would mind." She reached over and patted my knee, causing me tense further at her touch. When she noticed me recoiling at her touch, she withdrew her hand, casting a steady look upwards at me.

She sighed, readjusting herself in the chair to sit up straight, crossing her legs at the ankles and folding her hands in her lap. Jillian`s composer in these situations frighteningly resembled that of a sociopath,

"I was under the impression that was what you wanted, what with the little story you told everyone."

"Don`t flatter yourself, that isn`t what I meant at all."

She raised an eyebrow, trying to win a staring contest with me. Eventually she gave in and shifted the slate eyes to the window beyond the desk.

"Huh," Her tone carefree and just as displeasing to the ear,

"Most of the guys I`ve met like you willingly let me eat them alive, you know?"

Oh, I was well aware of her games. Jillian was known for fooling around with the emotions of many of the school boys.

Before I could even think on the begrudging words pouring from my mouth, I landed a blow that the girl wouldn`t be able to turn deaf ears to for quite some time,

"And I`m certain that you purge them afterwards as well."

I looked back over to her, slate eyes meeting mine and I knew as soon as the look of helplessness crossed her face that I had boldly gone where no one had dared with her. A line had been crossed, and I was now under Jillian`s skin as well.

She looked to the floor, letting out a single, silent, breathy laugh, letting a waterfall of blonde hair fall over her face so that I couldn`t see her expression.

I went to apologize, but the Dean decided to return to his office in that perfectly timed moment. He sighed upon seeing the both of us seated in front of his desk, but frowned when his eyes fell on me. Shaking his head from side to side, he seated himself at his desk.

"You`re excused, Minamino, I know what happened here." His voice turned stern at the second half of his sentence, as he looked to Jillian, who had recovered quickly in the presence of the third party, smiling sweetly at him as he glowered across the desk,

"Well, Beckett. You certainly know how to pick 'em." He said dryly, rummaging in the drawer to his left.

"Are you sure?" I stammered out, feeling the guilt of what I`d said before he entered the room weigh on me as I realized Jillian was about to be torn apart further without any question to her motive behind her actions. It had been my fault. I didn`t want the girl to have to endure the punishment alone.

"You heard the man, Shu," Jillian`s words were sweet, laced with undertones of bitterness directed at me,

"Tell everyone I said hello."

A flip of her head, and the hair was out of her eyes. They were cold, her usual pout pressed into a tight line as she stared at me, silently cursing me.

I stood, exiting the room and closing the door behind me. I wasn`t exactly sure where I was the safest; in the room with a woman scorned or thrown to the rumor-mongering sharks that were our classmates.

* * *

**BENNY & JOON**

**Velvet lips and the eyes to pull me in,  
****We both know you'd already win.**

"I`m afraid that Jill`s gunna have to stay here for a few days over winter break," Shiori informed me as I helped her set the dinner table.

"What about Elise?" I asked, though I already knew Elise would be gone as well. I was curious to know what her cover was for her whereabouts when she would be attending the Dark Tournament in less than a month now.

Jillian was adamant about getting out of our house on the weekends, I wondered how much squirming she would do when she found out she`d be here all break.

Shiori frowned as she turned the fan over the burners on, having to raise her voice to speak to me over the noise,

"She wants to visit her mother in the states. And you know how Jill feels about poor Christina."

I bit my lip at these words, remembering how Jillian had always detested her mother, accusing her of not caring about her. She hadn`t made the connection when she was younger that Christina Beckett couldn`t remember who she was, she only felt abandoned.

She would have a hard time being without her sister over the holidays, as Elise was one of the only people she was certain wouldn`t abandon her when she needed her. Her father was no good to her.

I comforted myself in the fact that with Shiori she wouldn`t feel so down. I had always imagined Jillian`s disorder as the chemicals in her brain malfunctioning and going to the wrong areas they needed to be in for a normal person to survive in society. It was hard to hate her for that reason alone, that she couldn`t help it. Still, there were things that the girl could help with only a little self control.

"Shuichi, would you go get Jillian? I`ve already tried calling her down three times now."

I felt a lump form in my throat. Her directions struck some strange feeling in me... almost fear, it seemed. I hadn`t spoken to Jillian since I left the Dean`s office earlier that day. She had gotten home later than usual after school had ended and shut herself in her room before I realized she`d walked in the door.

Mother had no idea what had happened at school that day, thank whatever higher power was looking out for me. I knew the dean hadn`t bothered to phone the girl`s father, either. The way he had dismissed me seemed so casual, as if it was a daily occurrence that Jillian sexually assaulted a student.

I rapped my knuckles against her door a couple of times. I knew she was in the room, able to smell her from the hallway. I waited quietly for a minute before I knocked again.

"I heard you the first time." Her muffled words bled through the door.

"Are you coming down?" I called back. I heard her scoff at my words.

"I don`t feel well."

"Shiori will come up here if I tell her you`re sick." I shouldn`t have needed to remind the girl of the consequences she inflicted on herself with my worrisome mother.

"I really will be sick if I have to look at _you_." She shot back, and there was a thump as the door vibrated in reaction to the girl chucking her pillow at it from the other side.

With caution, I turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door too the four walls that struggled to harbor all of Jillian`s teen angst. I looked over to the bed, where she was sitting up straight, armed with another decorator pillow to chuck at me as she glared through red rimmed eyes.

"Out."

"Jillian,"

"OUT."

I dodged the pillow, letting it hit the closet door behind me, rattling it on its hinges noisily. Mother would be wondering what was happening up here if Jillian kept her violent streak up.

"I just want to apologize." I said, watching her grab at another pillow and force it over her head as she face planted into the mattress.

"Ah dond give a fug." Was her reply.

"Jillian I shouldn`t have said that earlier, I,"

The pillow flew towards me, and I grabbed it before it came into contact with my face. I heard footfalls as I pulled my arm down to my side, revealing the emotional teenager that stood before me. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled fiercely, trying to form the sharpest, most painful words she could think of. None of which would cut me the way she longed for them to. Her narrowed eyes flickered back and forth, focusing from my left to right as she searched through every file in her brain for the cruelest words she could muster. But she had been stalling for too long, just staring up at me. I noticed her eyes start to grow soft, and finally, her face as well as she began to look more forlorn than angered. She brought her head down to level and turned away from me, wrapping her arms around her, fingers clutching at each upper arm.

Mother was heard calling for us from the bottom of the stairs. I knew if we took much longer, she would come upstairs and gingerly knock on the door and become concerned about why we were arguing.

"You have every right to resent me."

I was struck by these words. Resent the girl?

"I kind of resent myself for doing it."

She opened the door and slipped into the hallway, leaving me to stand in her bedroom, completely confused. I should have expected the odd behavior, as Jillian often changed gears on her emotions, perceptions, decisions. Sometimes the episodes could last a day, sometimes only half an hour.

I wondered how long she would stay in this mindset.

"Rice, again?" Jillian`s voice was heard as I headed down the stairs. I entered the kitchen as she seated herself before the plate Mother had fixed for her.

"If I eat any more of this I`ll get monolids."

Shiori snorted into a laugh at the girl`s stab at our culture. Jillian smirked at her own sick sense of humor as she pushed the food around her plate.

"Your father told me at work today that we`ll get to spend Shogatsu together." Shiori tried to make light of the situation.

"Yeah, I heard." Jill`s monotone forced Mother to lay off the subject, as it was blatantly obvious by just those three words that the mention had upset her.

"I will also be leaving town for a few days, Mother," I informed the woman, taking the attention off Jillian for a moment so that she could no longer feel the weight of my mother`s sympathetic mannerisms.

"Oh, Shuichi, what for?" She looked disappointed that I would miss out on our "family time" over the holiday break. I would never purposely deprive my mother of our precious time together as a family, however, there was no way that I could turn down the invitation I had received for the tournament.

"The science club is going camping a little offshore to study plant life. It isn`t mandatory, I can stay if you`d like."

I knew my mother would never intervene with my interest in school activities. I watched her swallow the food she was chewing over as I explained why I would be absent like a dry lump in her throat. She didn`t want to tell me no, but she didn`t want to be alone for the holiday.

"No honey, you go ahead. I`m sure you`ll have a lot of fun. And Jillian and I can spend some special time together for the holiday. Right dear?" She smiled over to the older Beckett, who returned her smile with slightly flushed cheeks. Perhaps Jillian was still shy around my mother even after she had been so used to invading our home for so long.

What an awful way to put that, _invading_. It wasn`t as if she had wanted to. Would I ever learn to quit taking stabs at the girl, even in my head?

"Of course, Shiori-san." Jillian flashed her teeth at the woman before meeting her slate eyes with mine, looking for a silent approval of her answer to the woman. I smiled politely back, and with that sign, Jillian went back to picking at her food.

"I think I`ll go weed the garden for a little while before it gets too dark. Take a few more bites, would you, dear?" Mother excused herself from the table after encouraging Jill to eat more as she did every meal. She retrieved her jacket from the coat closet before heading outside into the cool November evening. I could tell she was a little disappointed to hear the news of my leaving, but she would keep it to herself. She tried to distract her emotions with the yard work, as it relaxed her.

"Rice is a carb," Jillian said from behind gritted teeth. Shiori let out a giggle at Jillian`s begrudging tone for the dinner as she turned the handle to go out to the back.

Slate eyes met mine as she pushed herself away from the table and went over to the sink, dumping her food down the garbage disposal. Jillian proceeded to wash the dish off, scrubbing it with detergent. She then grabbed a drying towel and turned to face me as she finished drying the plate, eyes silently daring me to say something else that day about her eating habits.

"Asshole." She murmured as she placed the plate on top of the stack inside their respectable cabinet before disappearing from the kitchen.

I sat, dumbstruck at the fact that I had repelled both of the women in the household away during one meal without using any of my you-ki.

I could hear Jillian shuffling bare feet outside of my bedroom later that evening as I was working on my trigonometry assignment, which, Jillian would collect from Kitajima the next morning before class started.

"Hide your pentagram, I`m coming in." She called out before turning the knob and letting herself into my room. I didn`t bother moving from my desk, as I figured our encounter would be brief as they usually were when she initiated them.

She looked around the room silently for a few moments before I realized she was examining the four walls with her eyes.

"Well I suppose everything looks normal." She looked back to me, crossing her arms. Her demeanor was incredibly familiar. This was the slightly angered and confident Jillian that I had seen many times. I wouldn`t be surprised if she were to grab a fistful of my shirt and start hissing in my face like she was in the mafia at any given moment.

"What can I do for you, Jillian?" I asked, looking back down at the formulas I had been working on. She made her way over to the bed, sitting with her back leaned up against the wall as she stared at me.

"I don`t care what weird shit you`re up to, Shu," She started in, and I was glad that my back was to her so that she didn`t see the annoyed look that had crossed my face at the mention of my "cult activities",

"But if you`re dragging Elise into it, I won`t hesitate to throw you under the bus to your mother."

My eyebrows furrowed and I wondered what she knew about Elise thus far.

"Jillian, what are you talking about?"

"Oh shut up, like you don`t know," She rolled her eyes, gripping the comforter on my bed tightly in her hands, knuckles turning white.

"Elise isn`t going to visit our mom, and what you said about the Science Club taking a trip over break was complete bullshit. I can hardly believe Shiori swallowed _that_ one."

"If you don`t want to know about my business, then what exactly do you want to know?" I asked, knowing that I couldn`t have Shiori worrying about my absence over the course of the tournament, and Jillian would ensure that if it concerned her younger sister.

"Where is my sister going over break, and how is she associated with your bullshit?"

I was at a loss for words now, after all of the time I had been graced to come up with an excuse to tell the girl when she finally wanted to know what my mischief was. Here I was, tongue tied and in fear of what Jillian`s reaction would be.

"Your sister is working with Yusuke Urameshi as a detective for the underworld."

Jillian sputtered out laughter at these words, breaking character from her Mama Bear stance. She paused when she noticed that I wasn`t laughing, and that I was holding my face stern,

"Yusuke Urameshi doesn`t let anyone boss him around. Why is that the strangest factor out of all of that to me? That Yusuke has a job…"

"You wanted to know the truth, Jillian." I pointed out to her as I turned back to my Trig homework.

"You were serious…" She said before moving over the mattress and sitting across from me, leaning closer, curious now.

"Go on then." She ordered, her tone softer now. I sighed, turning back to her and running my fingers through my hair, racking my brain for ways to word the events that had taken place between Elise and I thus far.

"I had no idea that Elise was working for the Spirit World. Your sister was the one who tracked me down when I stole something from the Reikai."

"First of all," Jillian cut in, still incredibly unconvinced that I was telling the truth, "How the hell did you get into the underworld? Wouldn`t you have to be dead?"

I shook my head, "No, you see, I`m an apparition… in a way."

Jillian raised an eyebrow, a smirk tugging on the corner of her lips,

"Really now?" She asked sarcastically, repressing laughter. I had no other choice but to show her, as seeing is believing with the naïve.

I opened the drawer to my left, with Jillian craning her neck to watch my movements as I dug through the envelopes I kept an assortment of seeds filed in. I reached for a rose bulb, figuring that would seem the most innocent out of my other options.

I turned back to her, showing her the tiny bulb, about the size of a fingernail pinched between my thumb and index finger.

"Don`t blink," I told her, as I focused in on the bulb with my energy, watching it burst into a bright red followed by a thorny stem, still pinched between fingers. I offered the fully bloomed rose to the girl, who stared at it in awe.

"Okay, _Tuxedo Mask_," She stammered out as she reached out carefully, brushing her fingers across the pedals to see if it was real.

"Go on, you can have it." I offered it to her again, and she gingerly plucked the rose from my hand and continued to stare at it as if it could talk. What I didn`t expect was the smile that came next, her eyes lighting up as she looked up at me, giggling a little.

Her infectious smile spread through me, and I felt myself grinning back at how impressed she had been. It may have been the first time I`d been the cause of Jillian`s joy, that light laughter that sounded like little bells.

I realized this was what was so attractive about her personality. As her slate eyes met mine, the way she smiled at me, I felt content in that moment to be in her presence.

I continued to explain to Jillian how Elise and I had gotten involved with Yusuke. I explained the stab wounds, why I could heal, why Jillian had been possessed. The girl hung on my every word, listening closely as a child does with their favorite bedtime story. We talked late into the night, making that the first time we`d been in the same room together, alone, for over ten minutes without annoying one another.

From that moment on, I was completely hooked.


	8. Boys Will Be Boys, Baby

"So I guess you live a pretty average life, huh?" Kuwabara asked as he seated himself across from me at the table. I nodded at his words. I lead a pretty average human life.

"I`m actually surprised it`s so quiet around here." I hadn`t been paying attention to the silence before. It was odd, considering that it was a Monday afternoon and Jillian should have been back from orchestra practice by then.

"Why? You got a dog?"

"More like a bitch."

Right on cue, Jillian`s drone was heard as she appeared in the doorway, an unlit cigarette hanging from her lips as she ran her fingers through the honey colored strands of hair, flipping the section over her shoulder as she stepped past the table and opened the fridge. She observed Kazuma carefully, looking him up and down before ducking into the ice box, rummaging for the diet cola.

"Good evening, Jillian." I locked eyes with Kuwabara, who had turned away as soon as Jillian had bent down to stare into the fridge as if it were Wonderland. I noticed the tinge of pink on his face, embarrassed that I`d caught him ogling the girl who was bent over only a few feet from the table. I didn`t blame him for staring. It wasn`t Kuwabara`s fault that Jillian wandered around in see through leggings. He was lucky enough that she didn`t decide to walk around in her underwear like she did after showering.

I would even admit to staring myself everyone in a while. Naturally, I turned away when I caught myself doing it. It was hard not to notice when you could see the girl`s underwear through her pants.

And of course, I would never, ever give her the satisfaction of knowing that.

"So is this your new boyfriend?" Jillian winked as she kicked the fridge shut with one socked foot, pushing the arms on her sweatshirt halfway up her forearms, cuffing them. The girl leaned over the back of my chair, wrapping an arm around my neck as she bent down to nuzzle the side of my face. I could feel her tiny frame, firm underneath the soft, mauve material of her sweatshirt as she buried her nose into the side of my neck.

"He`s a little out of your league, don`t you think?" She teased, giggling to herself afterwards. I closed my eyes, sighing. She had always enjoyed poking fun at me when it came to having any relationship to our male classmates and acquaintances.

"This is Kuwabara, Jill. He`s a friend."

Jillian, interested in the new face, unlatched herself from me and sat between Kuwabara and I, leaning over the table to jab a finger into his pompadour.

"Cute hairdo." She giggled, looking back at me. She frowned when she realized that I hadn`t been laughing at her sarcastic remark.

"So are you two like, brother and sister?" Kuwabara stammered, his face reddening at Jillian`s disregard for personal space. The girl only grinned at the flustered expression she`d given him, leaning her chin into her hand and tilting her head to the side,

"Nope."

"Oh, so are you two…?" He waggled a finger between the two of us, insinuating that the two of us were in a romantic relationship, and Jillian cackled, throwing her head back in delight before replying,

"Nah. Shuichi here is a _terrible_ killjoy," She reached over to me next, pinching at the side of my face with two fingers,

"Besides, he couldn`t handle me." She stuck her tongue out as I took her hand from my face, forcing it back to her.

"I have survived you since the seventh grade, Jillian." I pointed out to her, and she stuck her nose in the air as she pushed herself away from the table.

"I`m going out for a smoke," She turned back to us before exiting through the back door.

"Don`t wait up for me." She batted her lashes in my direction before biting back another fit of laughter as she shut the door behind her.

* * *

**BOYS WILL BE BOYS, BABY  
You built up a world of magic,  
Because your real life is tragic.**

"Don`t let Jillian make you uncomfortable, she`s nothing but a shameless flirt. Completely harmless." I turned back to Kuwabara, who was staring at me as if I had lost my mind. I pushed myself away from the table, about to set out for training. It was mid November and the Tournament was a little over month away.

"Is she like a cousin or something?" He asked, looking through the glass panes of the back porch to watch Jillian strolling around the rosebushes in the backyard, lighting her cigarette.

"Just a friend." I watched as the girl exhaled, her back to the house, retreating farther back towards the trees lining the back fence.

"She seems pretty crazy about you." I watched as his eyes glazed over as he watched Jill disappearing into the garden. He was thinking of Yukina, not completely over the rejection he`d suffered when she returned home. I didn`t tell him that Jillian was crazy in general, out of habit. We didn`t use the C-R-A-Z-Y word around Jill, as it was detrimental to her recovery.

"She just has a lot of personality."

I felt my jaw tighten as I watched the girl disappear through the gate in the back, unaware that we had been watching her. I wondered where she escaped when Shiori wasn`t around to beg her not to leave.

"We should go, Hiei won`t wait forever." I turned from the kitchen door to exit out the front to head to our usual training spot. Mother knew that I was going to be busy that evening, so I wouldn`t be to blame if Jillian got herself into trouble. Still, I would feel some guilt if something were to happen to her. Not that she would listen to me anyway, the girl made it a point to do the exact opposite of whatever she was told. Even if I were to ask her politely to stay home, she would look at me as if I had grown three heads shortly before laughing in my face.

The street lights flickered on as Kuwabara and I stepped off the curb and onto the street. I caught the faint smell of Jillian`s cigarette smoke in the breeze, along with something else that had put me on edge.

The smell of scorched flesh.

* * *

...Crazy was sitting on the sofa in the living room when I`d returned home. It was a little past nine, and Shiori was out with Hatanaka. She had been going out more often after her recovery. I was happy for her, and Kazuya always brought her home safe and sound by ten thirty on week nights.

The room was dark, except for the glow of the television, bathing the room in blue. I stood in the doorway and watched the familiar scene from the cartoon version of _Beauty and the Beast_ played out on screen.

I had been forced to sit through the fairy tale movies since middle school, as they were the only things that calmed the girl down when she was having an episode. They were children`s movies, silly and completely illogical in every way.

I sat on the other end of the couch as Jillian, who was watching the movie through half-lidded, glazed over eyes. She was curled with her knees to her chest, leaning back into the cushions.

"I would have thought that you`d go for The Little Mermaid again." I spoke over the angry shouting of the Beast. It was the scene where he demanded that Belle join him for dinner. Usually Jillian cracked a smile at his lack of manners, but tonight she just sat through it without a reaction.

"I watched that last week." She murmured, not taking her eyes from the screen.

"Have you taken your medicine today?" I asked, and Jillian finally gave a reaction. Her eyes slid over to mine, narrowing at the question.

"Yes. Not that it`s your business." She mumbled the last half of the sentence, returning her stare to the television. Irritable and desolate looking, I decided against harassing her further.

"Why do you like these movies so much?" I changed the subject. She looked over at me carefully once more before returning her eyes to the screen,

"'Cause."

"There must be a reason."

There was no reply for a moment as Jillian`s eyes watered and the dam broke. She refused to look away from the film as the water slid down her face. There was no uneven breathing, no sniffling to accompany the waterworks. She just let them fall, catching the mascara on her bottom lashes and allowing the black drops to stain her cheeks.

I stiffened at the sight. I always felt awkward when Jillian showed her pained side, as I didn`t know how to comfort her. Shiori was better at handling these situations. All I knew how to do was sit and watch. It was hard to understand her disorder, as it wasn`t an ailment one could see with the eye. She didn`t have a reason to cry, to act the way she did. The emotions just came on like the rising tide.

She had seemed perfectly content when she was harassing Kuwabara and I earlier, and in a moment, she was outside pressing the lit end of a cigarette to her skin. I couldn`t help but feel aggravated by her dramatic mood swings, confused as to why she couldn`t just take care of herself at fifteen years of age.

I knew better than to ask her what was wrong. That would only force her to dwell on the sadness longer, prolonging the suffering and tears. She needed a distraction. So, I consoled her in the only way I knew how.

"I think Mother bought another one of those movies for you. The newer one. What is it called?"

"…Aladdin."

"Right." I nodded, making it a point to not look directly at her while speaking. In my peripheral I saw the girl wipe at her face with the back of her hand.

"I think Mother likes those movies as much as you do. It must be a girl thing."

The silence that I received to the last statement was a dead giveaway that she did not want to talk about Shiori. There were unspoken limits when talking her down from the emotional highs; herself and anything else that would receive a negative response or no response at all. I would have to change the subject again.

"We`re supposed to start tennis in gym tomorrow." I continued, "I know you and Kitajima-chan are excited for that."

I heard her breath catch with laughter in response to the new subject; as Jillian and Maya dominated the rest of our classmates in the sport. Jillian was the one who had taught Elise how to play the game, and how to maim the opponent with a tennis ball if they weren`t fast enough to move out of the way.

Usually the set ended with Maya and Jill waving their rackets in the air, dancing in a circle and making mock Native American calls as if they were at a pow-wow as the losing team held their sides, out of breath and bruised in several places.

"I`m kind of rusty." She shot herself down, still in the negative. I frowned upon her reply, racking my brain for something that would get her to reroute her thinking patterns.

"That soufflé looks really good."

I couldn`t help but snicker at her own attempt to distract herself with the movie, watching as food danced across the screen in animated, choreographed fashion.

"Cartoon food always looks really good." She sighed, frowning as she watched the musical number the cutlery was performing. At least she had moved past whatever was going on in her head earlier.

"If you`re hungry, I don`t feel sorry for you." I said, though smiling at her. She shot me an icy look before giving away to a grin herself, sticking her nose in the air as I continued,

"Mother stocked the kitchen and you have yet to take advantage of anything besides the diet cola."

Pretending to scowl, the girl reached for the remote and turned the volume on the television up loud enough to where I would need to shout to be heard over the noise. She smirked at the personal victory and placed the remote on her arm of the sofa in case I tried to foil the win that, unbeknownst to her, I had let her have.

At least she had cut the dramatics, that was all that mattered. After a few minutes, she returned the volume to a more reasonable level. I could have been mistaken, but as she stared straight at the screen in the dark room next to me, I thought I heard her mumble the words,  
"Thank you."

* * *

"…Do you have everything, dear?" Shiori hovered over me, about to pick through my bag for the umpteenth time to recount everything that I may need on my trip.

"Yes, Mother." I paused before looking around the entryway one last time before heading out,

"Where is Jillian, by the way?" I asked, craning my neck to look up the stairs. I assumed that she was sleeping in, being that it was the first day off of School for break, and Jillian always took every advantage to sleep until at least noon on her days off.

"She left this morning." Mother looked at me as if I should have known that information already,  
"She decided to go visit her mother with Elise. She didn`t tell you?"

I felt my body tense at the information. Elise and I hadn`t exactly told her all of the details of the tournament.

I had spoken to younger Beckett over the phone to make sure that we had kept our stories similar as to not concern the girl. She didn`t need to know that there was a slight chance we wouldn`t survive the tournament. She already knew enough as it was.

I knew as soon as the words escaped mother`s lips that Elise and I would be dragging Jillian home before the day was over.

Unless Elise approved of this behavior, which was plausible, as she had a soft spot for Jillian`s fits at times. Jillian being her manipulative self could have easily persuaded her sister into letting her come along, thought it was completely out of the question.

I smiled at my mother, shaking my head and pretending as if it was only a memory slip.

"Yes of course. I`m sorry you`ll have to spend the holiday alone then. Are you sure you still want me to go?" I asked this knowing she would tell me to go anyway. I knew that I didn`t have a choice. We wouldn`t have enough for a team if I were to drop out, and if that were the case, well, the five of us would be hunted down and massacred without a warning.

* * *

"Urameshi and America still haven`t shown up yet." Kuwabara snarled from beside me as Hiei and I too waited rather impatiently for the arrival of the two, and possibly Jillian herself. I hadn`t said anything to either of them about the drama that was about to ensue, but it was certain that there would be no time for Jillian`s shenanigans, as the ship was about to board, and they had yet to show.

"You should worry about yourself, Kuwabara. Have you gotten any better since our last fight?" Hiei took a stab at the impatient brute, causing Kuwabara to pout over our companion`s remark. Hiei`s eyes slid over and upward to catch mine as he could sense my unease at the situation. He didn`t dare pry into my business, still a tad uncertain how close to the line he could get without crossing it, fearing to sever our camaraderie.

When it came time to board the ship, neither Elise nor Yusuke were there, sending Kuwabara into a panic. I would admit to being on edge as well. More than likely they had to turn back to take Jillian home. I couldn`t help but feel that I should have known she would pull a stunt like this.

"Hey wait a minute, Sir, our team still has some stragglers!" Kazuma fretted, slouching his posture as he noticed all of the inhuman eyes turning to stare at the scene we had just created.

"Psych!" More attention was drawn as Elise`s voice rang out from behind us, where she stood, Yusuke beside her, followed by a masked figure behind them, even more petite than Hiei himself.

The two teens looked beaten and exhausted.

Jillian was no where in sight.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, guys." He flashed his usual golden boy grin as he shoved one hand in his jacket pocket, holding his duffel bag in the other.

"Urameshi! You nearly gave me a heart attack!" Kuwabara scolded him as Yusuke faltered keep up his cool façade before the crowd of competition. I watched as he slouched over, leaning on Elise to support his weight.

The blonde`s face flushed a rosy color, and she hid behind a waterfall of platinum blonde as they came in physical contact.

When Yusuke noticed the younger Beckett`s reaction, he too flushed and covered his embarrassment with,

"These forest hikes really wipe me out, heh." He straightened immediately and then made his way over to a tree, settling with leaning his weight on that instead.

It was evident the two had trained together, as they struggled emotionally and physically in the same way.

"You look awful," Kuwabara feigned concern before finishing with, "Oh wait that`s just you." Allowing the tension between Yusuke and Elise to evaporate without a trace as they both laughed at Kazuma`s joke.

Hiei stepped forward next, drawing his sword, intent to test out Yusuke`s new skills. He had never completely adjusted to the fact that he would not get his fair fight against the Detective any time soon as we all expected to be somewhat content on that matter as long as we were enrolled in the sadistic martial arts tournament. The demon began to swing his blade at the younger, human boy, who dodges every move with ease, regardless of his exhaustion.

I looked over to Elise, who was watching with wide eyes as Hiei attacked, pupils incased by blue irises focused in and followed every movement. I was unsure whether I should tell her about her sister. Perhaps she knew, though I had a strong premonition that she had no idea what Jillian was up to. Though, as long as the girl wasn`t planning on coming along for the ride, I was somewhat relieved.

* * *

...There was a knock at the door as I sat down with a vodka cranberry in my hand, causing me to toss the drink back and resist angrily slamming the glass down onto the coffee table in irritation at the interruption. I prayed to God that Shiori hadn`t found out that I was lying about going to visit our family in the States, as I had figured I had a pretty solid excuse.

I tip toed across the wood floors and over to the entryway, slipping into my house slippers before looking out the peep hole to the door. On the other side stared a rather peeved looking Keiko Yukimura and another brunette, cigarette hanging out her mouth and a disgruntled look upon her face.

I opened the door and stared at the two in surprise, and Keiko gasped as she realized that I was home, as if she had realized something,

"Elise isn`t here," I informed her, "But we can still hang if you really want. I`m only a little tipsy."

"I knew it." Keiko`s doe eyes narrowed as she spoke.

"Something wrong, Yukimura?" I asked, leaning on the frame of the door to support myself. The girl rarely showed her irritated side around Elise and I unless her boyfriend from school was concerned, and he was no where in sight.

"Yusuke and Kuwabara are missing too. How long has Elise been gone?" She asked, panic flooding her vocal chords. I blinked, not having really thought about it.

Big sister of the year, the last time I`d been in the same room as my sister was last weekend, when she`d come home at an ungodly hour and took a shower while I had been trying to sleep. I could only remember the details because I had to clean up after her the morning after. And I was pissed.

"Idunno, I saw her a week ago, why?"

Keiko and the other girl exchanged a knowing look, before Keiko grabbed my wrist and started beating it down the hallway to the elevator. I yanked the door shut behind me as I was drug by the fourteen year old with the older girl on our heels.

"Atsuko called me and told me she was holding Botan off, I`m not sure if she`s still there," She called back as we ran down the sidewalk, headed for the apartments on the next block over, where Yusuke and his mother had relocated after their previous apartment caught fire.

"Who gives a shit?" I shouted as I tried to manage with burning sides and uneven breaths. I could dance until my body ached but I was not a runner. Whenever Elise and I visited the gym she had always needed to carry my sorry ass home after I forced her to leave early.

"It`s just some stupid karate tournament. Who gives if they aren`t here?"

I almost had to peel my face off the back of Keiko`s head as she stopped short, causing me to run into her, full force.

"What did you say?" The older rasped from beside me as I leaned over, hands on my knees to catch my breath,

"Shuichi and Elise already told me. They`re going to some stupid training camp."

The older girl narrowed her chestnut eyes down at me, pushing the sleeves on her cable knit sweater up her arms,

"If it was just a workshop, my baby brother would have told me. My guess is that your sister lied to you."

"Psh," I scoffed, straightening, "Elise and I tell each other everything." I tuned to Keiko, who was looking up at me, giving me a strange look with her wide, brown eyes.

"Elise didn`t tell me anything." She paused, biting her lip. She obviously felt betrayed by her own best friend.

"Something isn`t right here," The other girl pressed forward, climbing the stairs inside the shiny, new apartment complex,

"Come on, Botan could high tail it out of there before I have the chance to make her talk!"

Keiko gave me another pained, steady look before reaching for my bad hand and gripping it tightly as she pulled, forcing me to whimper as I was doomed to the hike up the stairs.

The older Kuwabara had the blue haired girl by the front of her shirt when we`d entered the Urameshi residence, glaring down into her bright pink eyes that were filled with fear of the over protective sister.

I cautiously entered the apartment, closing the door behind me so that the neighbors that were undoubtedly eavesdropping would have a harder time listening in on what was about to go down.

Cotton Candy was dropped on her bottom, and I rounded the corner into the first bedroom as she nervously scooted her booty until she was up against an empty bed.

"Easy now… no need to get violent!" I watched as her eyes darted between the two concerned girls fearfully as they loomed menacingly over her.

To the left was another woman, who I recognized to be Yusuke`s mother, Atsuko Urameshi.

"We know that you know, Botan! Tell us where Yusuke is!"

"And my baby brother, too. He hasn`t come home for days."

"And neither of them even gave us a phone call!"

I looked back over to the girl`s cornering the circus freak, interested in how they were overreacting. Of course, maybe they weren`t overreacting. Maybe I was underreacting.

I stepped over to Atsuko`s snoozing form and grabbed the glass sitting on the table she`d been leaning on. It was half empty, but it was alcohol and my buzz was fading from all of the running around. Naturally, I tossed it back.

"Yes, I understand that you`re worried but… boys will be boys!" The strange girl giggled nervously. I watched as Kuwabara`s sister leaned down and got in this Botan`s face.

"_Mine won`t._" She snarled, "Now I want you to tell me exactly where Kazuma and Yusuke are."

"Please," Keiko piped from behind her before looking over to me as I downed the sour beverage in my hand.

"For our friendship," She watched me carefully. I met my eyes to the pink ones,

"I`d kind of like to know as well. Must be one hell of a secret party."

"It`s just that…" Botan squirmed under the pressure of three sets of eyes staring down at her,

"Now!"

"Botan!"

The other two viciously glared down at the girl as she silently debated whether she should spill or not. I pitied her, as I felt that I knew more than the other two girls did as well about the possible whereabouts of the boys and Elise. I had watched even the cunning and sneaky Shuichi Minamino trip over his wording as he explained why they needed to attend the trip to the Island,

"_There are certain… consequences for those that are specifically invited that refuse the invitation."_

"Okay, but promise not to faint!" The strange girl warned before diving in and speedily delivering the details.

"The boys were invited to a martial arts tournament, er the Dark Tournament to be exact. Only, they`ll be fighting demons from another dimension instead of other humans and there really isn`t an art form way so to speak… more like a brutal massacre of the other opponent but they should be fine so there really isn`t anything to worry about!"

The two girls let out the breath they`d been holding, eyes wide with fright.

"So they`re fighting in something called a Dark Tournament."

"…Against teams of monsters from an entirely different world?"

I watched as Keiko sunk to her knees. I groaned, rolling my eyes and stepped over to Atsuko to reach for the bottle of whiskey.

I filled the glass to the brim before taking another sip, scrunching my face at the bitterness of the liquid.

"I can`t believe they would be so reckless." The older Kuwabara spat as she hovered over Keiko`s wavering consciousness.

I sighed, putting the glass down before turning to them,

"I don`t think they had a choice." I met my eyes to Botan again, who only nodded solemly.

"Those in charge won`t let them refuse. The only way for them to live is to fight."

Our attention turned down to Keiko as she came too, overhearing the last bit of our conversation well enough to become even more enraged. She reached out and gripped Botan tightly, looking up at her,

"Now listen," She demanded, with more determination that I had ever seen on a girl her age, "You have to take me there."

"Yes, I`m going too." The other girl stood, hands on her hips.

I groaned before tossing the drink back and slamming it down onto the coffee table that Atsuko was still passed out on.

"I suppose she wants to go too." Botan stammered as the three looked over to my irritated expression.

"No, not really." I mumbled as I turned to walk back to my own apartment, struggling to walk straight. The older Kuwabara gripped my shoulders on my way out, stopping me.

"Jillian! Don`t you care about what happens to Elise?"

I felt my brow twitch at Keiko`s accusation of me not caring. Oh, I had cared. Cared that my own little sister had lied to me without any remorse whatsoever. At least Shuichi had attempted to be honest with me. Not that he wasn`t on my shit list at the moment either.

"I`m going to go pack." I mumbled before turning, using the wall to support myself as I made my way for the door.

This was bound to be a miserable ass break.


	9. Sentimental Boy Is His Nom de Plume

"Who puts a ritzy ass hotel in the middle of a sketchy, abandoned island?" I stared up at Hotel Kubikukuri, partly amused, partly irritated knowing that Shuichi and Elise were somewhere inside. I had never liked staying at hotels, being the germaphobe that I was. The first task on my list was to change the sheets on the bed, having brought my own, and then proceeding to call housekeeping to have them send up a vacuum and other cleaning supplies so that I could properly scour the entire room. The fact that I was sleeping on a mattress used by more than one person was enough to make my skin crawl. I shuddered at the thought, causing Kuwabara`s sister, Shizuru, to look over at me.

"You gunna be okay, kid?" She asked, giving me a steady look of concern. I frowned up at her, taking my eyes off the neon sign of the hotel entrance,

"Not even a little." I remarked before heading through the double doors.

"Jillian, don`t you want to come watch the Tournament with us?"  
I yanked the fitted sheet over the mattress as I heard Keiko on the other side of my door. My hotel room was down the hallway from the one the other three girls were sharing. It wasn`t that I was purposely trying to be anti-social, as socializing was no sweat to me. I wasn`t exactly at my best, and I just wasn`t feeling around to put on that side of me when I felt nothing but pure rage for Shuichi and Elise.

"No," I opened the door as I called out to answer, seeing Botan on the other side of it, Shizuru leaning against the opposite wall from my door, lighting her cigarette.

"But if you see either Elise or Shuichi you can give them a big fuck you from yours truly." I forced a sweet smile and waved at the other two girls that had accompanied Keiko. The youngest girl grit her teeth at my reply and nearly bit my head off in response,

"Jeeze Jillian, I know you`re mad, but even Shizuru`s going to go watch Kuwabara, and he didn`t tell her anything about the tournament either!"

I pursed my lips, pressing them into a straight line, irritated that Keiko had the gal to tell me how I should behave around my sister.

"Great idea," I spat, looking from Botan, to Keiko, to Shizuru, "Go out and support them even though they all lied to you. You`re all fucking pathetic." I scowled, reaching back and slamming the door in their faces.

"That girl!" Keiko brooded, muffled from the closed door separating us.

"Oh dear, maybe we should leave her alone…."

Yes, leave me alone. I looked over to the bed, determined to take a nap as soon as I had finished putting the bedding I`d brought on the mattress and cleaned the entire room. If they had wanted me to come, they would have invited me. I should never have let Keiko guilt me into going. I wasn`t wanted there. I should have stayed home.

A new guilt rose up inside of me, the guilt over leaving Shiori alone for the holiday. I hoped that Hatanaka would take care of her over the break. Dad would have given her a bonus by now for the Holiday Season, hopefully she was out buying herself something or having lunch with her boyfriend.

Speaking of Dad, it had been a while. I could hardly believe he`d bought into my sudden desire to see our mother for Christmas and New Year`s. We hadn`t celebrated Christmas since Elise and I were very little, as the holiday wasn`t widely celebrated in Japan, and our Dad was always too busy to stick around on our behalf. It used to bother me, Christmas brightened the winter months for me, because the house was always lit up despite the shit weather and the cold. I couldn`t stand the cold, or the snow.

Once the sheets were folded and tucked in tightly, I threw the comforter and the pillows atop before drawing the curtains.

I fell atop the comforter and dozed for hours.

* * *

**"SENTIMENTAL BOY" IS HIS NOM DE PLUME  
****But he didn't come and speak to me, or put my heart at ease.  
****And I believe that half the time I am a wolf among the sheep gnawing at the wool over my eyes.**  


I could hear a rustling in the background somewhere, stirring me from the depths of my dreams. The sound of the door opening. I was tired, and I tried to convince myself the sound was just a part of my dreams, but somewhere inside I knew I was wrong. Someone had entered my hotel room, and I was just lying on the bed among the decorative pillows, curled into the fetal position.

My anger had subsided, as I hadn`t been given a chance to remember how angry that I`d been at Elise and Shuichi. My head was halfway screwed on when I heard the footsteps on the carpet, shuffling softly to the side of the bed that I had my back to. The silence was too awkward to be my sister, as she would have immediately tried to initiate a conversation. No, this presence was definitely Shuichi, as I had been forced to endure that same silence many times before. When I stole the car, when he`d caught me retching up dinner.

Before he insulted me back in the Dean`s office.

"How was band camp, you lying sack of shit?" I spoke up, dryly, voice cracking from the deep breathing I`d been doing in my sleep. The silence that followed didn`t surprise me. It would take more …encouragement to get a rise out of the boy. I reached over to the bedside table, reaching for a cigarette as I climbed off the bed. Keeping my back to him, I stepped over to the window, pulling the large curtain back to reveal the night sky and the view overlooking the rest of the island. The distance merged the ocean into the black sky.

I had forgotten how irritated it made Shuichi when I displayed the bad habit openly in front of him, however, I wasn`t concerned about his feelings in that moment. After all, he was never concerned for mine.

I played with the lighter, playing with the spark wheel, holding it down to watch the flame long after I`d lit the end of the cigarette and inhaled. I turned, snapping it shut and looking over at the disheveled looking boy standing across the room.

I stepped over to him next, getting in his face, making sure I was too close for comfort as I exhaled the smoke directly into his face. I watched his eyes water and nose twitch, but he refused to move from his tense disposition.

"I`m taking you home Jillian." He finally spoke up as I turned back to the window, taking another drag before nearly choking on it at these words.

"I`m not going _anywhere_ with you, asshole." I wheeled in his direction again,

"Why do you always think you`re the one that calls the shots? I`m not under Mama Shiori`s roof anymore, so you can just take your flat ass on out of here." I spat, using a stab at his physical appearance out of habit. I was more prone to using this tone against Nagasawa.

My insults were wasted on Shuichi.

"Jillian Marie," He spoke from behind clenched teeth, using my full name, as if that would make an impact on me. Shuichi Minamino is not, and never has been the boss of me. And I wasn`t going to go down without one hell of a fight.

"We`re leaving when the next ferry comes to shore. Pack your things." I met my eyes to the hardened green ones that were burning a hole in me in the dark room. I snorted, exhaling more smoke,

"_You will join me for dinner_," I recited the Beast from the Disney Movie, being reminded of his disregard for Belle`s feelings the same way Shuichi had mine. Naturally, I compared myself to a princess,

"_That is not a request_!"

"No, it is not." His straightforward tone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight, I was enraged,

"Listen here, Red," I narrowed my eyes, standing on the balls of my feet so that I could make myself more intimidating,

"I already paid for the room, replaced the bedding and am in the middle of cleaning it spotless. Unless you want to reimburse me both the time and money, then you can just swerve. You`re lucky I haven`t lost my temper and yanked every last one of your pretty red hairs out like I wanted to a few hours ago."

"I can assure you that you are not nearly as infuriated as I am at the moment." He reached up, plucking the cigarette from my hand before walking away to put it out in the ash tray on the bedside table.

"I can _assure_ you," I raised my voice at him, though he was merely feet away, "That if you don`t get the hell out of my room, I will call hotel security and tell them that you broke into my room and tried to rape me. You know I`ll do it."

The words caused Shuichi to shake his shoulders with laughter,

"Yes Jill, I`m sure a hotel full of people betting on our lives will be inclined to help you." His amusement dissipated as he turned his attention back to the subject at hand,

"I can`t guarantee your safety here, without supervision. You`re neither safe surrounded by the current residents of this island, nor by yourself."

"Maybe you`re the one with the mental illness, those days are long gone for me. Get over your superiority complex and get the fuck out of here." The longer I had to look at him, the madder I continued to get. I found myself drawing my hand back,

"Oh, and before I forget," I prepared myself for the blow I was about to deliver across the strange, new cuts crossing upon his left cheek,

"This is for lying to me,"

As my right hand went sailing towards his mutilated face, he reached out and gripped my wrist firmly before I could come into contact. He used his other hand to pull my fingers out of the fist I had made.

"Define _long gone_,"

He showed me my open palm, a circular scar in the center of the smooth skin, a burn mark.

"I`d say that one`s about four and a half weeks." His voice burned my ears. How could he have been so perceptive? I attempted to retrieve my arm, yanking on it, only to have Shuichi`s grip not even budge at the force I`d put behind it. I`d never realized how much stronger he was. I`d always been a weakling, but he had never looked like much, weird magic powers or not.

He cracked a smile at my exasperation of his strength before releasing me.

"Either way, it`s none of your God damn business," I argued, "If Keiko and Shizuru can be here to support their idiots, then I have every right to be here as well." I pulled my arm back, cradling it in the other one as I wrapped them around myself,

"Do you and Elise think I`m stupid or something? You thought you could just conveniently leave out the main objective of this death tournament and I wouldn`t find out?"

"We withheld the details so that you wouldn`t try to do exactly what you`re doing right now."

"And see how much good that did you?" I stepped back, crawling back onto the bed and reaching for the pack of cigarettes so that I could re-light one. Of course, Shuichi saw my motive as soon as I turned away from him, and he snatched them up before I could get to them.

"God, you`re a bad case of herpes, you need to just _go away_." I buried my face in the pillow, muffling the groan.

"No more nonsense, Jill. Let`s go." He then proceeded to make his way to the suitcase sitting at the foot of the bed, opening it and heading to the drawers where I`d put my clothes.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I shouted as I watched him pack my things back in the suitcase, no where as neatly as I had.

"What are you—You`re folding that wrong, you`re gunna wrinkle it!"

"I shouldn`t have to remind you that this wouldn`t be happening right now if you hadn`t decided to tag along."

"You flatter yourself," I snarled, ripping the blouse from his hands. I took a deep breath, about to shout some more, when Keiko let herself in my room, thus interrupting whatever snarky words I was about to let out.

"Is everything okay? I heard shouting…" She looked nervously between Shuichi and I. Biting my tongue, I looked her outfit choice up and down. Someone needed to tell the girl that broaches were for women well over sixty five. I shook myself from the trance that the large, obnoxious broach had over me and met her eyes, scowling again before informing her that,

"Shuichi was just doing me a favor and packing my things for me, because he wants me to go home." I turned back to him before batting my eyes and adding,

"Does this mean I don`t get a rose?" To which he returned with a sigh as he rolled his forest green eyes, before packing more of my neatly folded wardrobe back into the suitcase.

"Jillian isn`t going anywhere!" The brunette bristled, stomping her way over to my bed, unpacking my clothes as Shuichi pulled another pair of jeans from the dresser drawers. I watched in silent horror as they wrinkled my clothes, tossing them around like they didn`t cost an arm or a leg or an third of my father`s income. It took all of my strength to not bash my head against the wall.

"Keiko, I appreciate your concern for Jillian, but she isn`t safe here," Shuichi hovered over the brunette girl, trying to reason with her. It was obvious he didn't know Keiko Yukimura all too well, as this was the girl that was more than capable of taming Yusuke Urameshi. I had never seen her wrath unleashed on anyone else, but it was pretty entertaining to watch her whirl on the red head, ripping him a new one as he shrunk under her shouting, sprayed with saliva as the girl broke the sound barrier with her shrill voice,

"Jillian has every right to be here!" She emptied the suitcase completely on the bed, spilling everything the boy had repacked, only creating even more of a mess. I really didn`t know why I bothered trying to keep things neat. I knew someone was bound to just fuck it up. I was still training my sister not to leave her towels on the floor after how many years?  
"What if something happened to Elise? Or you? Don`t you think she has a right to know?" Her tone sharp, not giving a second thought to defending me,  
"You know, I thought you were supposed to be the brains of the operation, but you`re just as dumb as Yusuke and Kuwabara!"

I had to suppress the obnoxious laughter that was trying to project out my mouth like vomit, choking it down to listen to her continue to burn the shit out of Shuichi, recording mental footage of the golden moment to replay over in my head for as long as I lived. Shuichi looked down at the girl, stricken with surprise at her outburst as I giggled softly, allowing myself some air to my burning lungs.

"You aren`t any better!" Keiko snapped on me, causing me to straighten in fear. Her eyes burned a hole right through me as she glared,

"You aren`t sitting out any more matches. You should consider yourself lucky you didn`t have to watch him in the ring today."

My eyes went from the pointed finger Keiko jabbed in Shuichi`s direction to the unreadable expression Shuichi had on his face. I looked at the cuts on his face, wondering how bad the fight could have been.

"Jill?"  
The three of us turned to the doorway, and my eyes met the bright blues of my younger sister`s.

"Can I talk to you, …alone?" She looked from Keiko to Shuichi. Shuichi left silently, having given up on me, while Keiko cast me a lingering look, as if she knew that there was about to be an unholy, one-sided catfight between the two of us.

"Be nice, you two." She warned quietly, before leaving the two of us, slowly shutting the door behind her.

"You`re so lucky Shuichi has already exhausted me emotionally from his bullshit." I looked down to the pile of my belongings emptied on my bed, reaching for an article of clothing to fold.

"He`s had a rough day." Elise walked over to the bed, reaching for another piece of clothing to help me fold. She was pretty decent at folding herself, I never had to refold much of what she had gotten done.

"I thought you didn`t like Shuichi anymore." I watched her face contort as I said this, like she was tasting something sour. I looked back to the bedside table for my cigarettes. Shuichi had taken them with him.

"Douche lord…" I grumbled. Elise looked up from the pants she had been folding, guilt plastered on her face.

"Shuichi`s a part of my team right now, it wouldn`t make sense to give him more grief than he`s already dealing with. His feelings are mutual to mine."

"Why did you lie to me?" I jumped to the question I`d been aching to ask. Elise continued to fold as I watched her, completely still as I awaited her reasoning.

"I wasn`t sure how you`d react. Shuichi told me it was best if we kept you in the dark."

Sure, throw him under the bus, I thought. Then again, why would Elise lie about that? We told each other everything, didn`t we?

And yet, I still didn`t know what she was capable of.

"Why were you invited?" I asked next. This time, she paused briefly, breaking the rhythm of her folding to stare down at the shirt in her hands before lifting her eyes to mine.

"Shuichi and I, as well as our other team mates… We`re strong. We possess what others would describe as supernatural powers. I`ve been able to sense the presence of demons and ward them off for a long time, now."

"You`re a demon, too, then?" I asked. The words seemed so unreal coming from my lips. Demons, like this was some weird sci-fi flic that our dad enjoyed watching when he had the time.

"No, I`m very human, at least I`m pretty certain." She placed the shirt atop the pile I`d been working on, moving on to another one.

"What did he tell you about himself, out of curiosity?"

"It confused me." I started in, trying to remember the details of what he`d told me after he`d pulled his magic trick with the rose bulb.

"That he`s a demon, but he`s inside a human body. His soul escaped from another world and took over the fetus that had formed in Shiori. He turned a rose from a bulb before I could blink…" My mind wandered back to that night, how I`d been completely allured by his gentle nature as he explained the reality of what he really was. It hadn`t changed a thing, really. He was the same, Shuichi, stick up his ass, boy next door, et cetera.

"Humans… certain humans possess the ability to harness their spiritual energy and use it to defend themselves. I`ve undergone a lot of training to put it to use." Her eyes drifted off, looking out the window behind me into the darkness,

"Yusuke has as well. We have both worked very hard to train for this tournament. But I`m afraid we still are not strong enough to make it through the end. These demons, they only know how to play dirty. Shuichi got himself into a rather complicated altercation today in his fight…"

I cursed myself inwardly for not wanting to go, feeling concern rise in my chest. I was Momma Bear when it came to anyone else messing with people I cared for. Regardless of how cold he could be, Shuichi was still a brother, and I believed fiercely in protecting my own kin.

"Did you fight today?" I asked quietly, hoping my carelessness had caused me to sleep peacefully as my sister was sentenced to a death match as well.

"Not yet, but there`s no doubt that I won`t in the near future. Our opponents are ruthless."

I wasn`t used to this side of my sister, this vulnerability. Nine times out of ten, I was the one confessing my fears to her as she listened with open ears and comforting words. I, on the other hand, did not know how to offer comfort to others.

"Jillian, I need to ask you something," She stammered, and I cocked my head to the side in curiosity. Elise was acting strange. She looked tired, disheveled in appearance and scatter brained.

"I`ve developed these feelings for someone that I know I shouldn`t have," Her eyes downcast, ashamed to look at me, she continued on looking as if tears could drip from her eyes at any moment,

"I need to make them stop, before I hurt someone."


	10. Trials of Our Youth

"You look like hell, Urameshi,"

Yusuke and Kuwabara turned from the sitting area to find the blonde in the doorway.

"Yeah? You should have seen me yesterday," Yusuke replied, watching as the girl drew closer, seating herself on the couch next to Kazuma.

"Since when did you get here, anyway?" He asked as the girl pulled out a cigarette. She had managed to buy another pack on the first floor after Shuichi had confiscated the pack she`d originally brought with her. Which was an adventure in itself.

"You two know each other?" Kuwabara asked, looking between the two. Jillian nodded, leaning back into the soft, red cushions as she fiddled with the unlit cancer stick in her mouth.

"I thought she was here for Kurama." He watched the blonde close her eyes as she exhaled deeply, trying to relax. The truth was, she had been battling anxiety the entire day she`d been at the hotel. Shuichi was no where to be found, and her sister had left the building before she`d even woken up that morning. Being alone in strange places threw the girl into a panic. Any company was good enough.

"Nah, that`s Elise`s sister."

"Elise has a sister?"

"Ta daaah," Jillian mumbled as she pulled the cigarette from her teeth and tucked it behind her ear. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at Yusuke with all the rage of an overprotective mother bear guarding her cub,

"I came here with my dear friend Keiko. You remember Keiko, don`t you, Urameshi?"

Accusing, grey eyes stared intensely at the boy as he was struck with fear. Fear of what Jillian knew.

"'Course Urameshi remembers Keiko, they`re in _love_," Kuwabara wiggled his eyebrows at Yusuke, and Jillian cocked her head to the side, eyes wide as she stared at Yusuke with a knowing look,

"Is that so? I guess it was kind of hard to tell," She shrugged when Kazuma turned his attention towards her, and the girl smiled pleasantly. Only when he looked back to Yusuke did her face convert to a look of complete savagery, sending silent messages to the now terrified boy, who was laughing nervously,

"Kuwabara`s only kidding,"

"You think you`re so macho, Urameshi," Kuwabara continued to tease. An evil grin plastered itself on Jillian`s face as she provoked the boy.

"Too bad girls aren`t macho." She sighed, shaking her head,

"We get out feelings hurt so easily," Beads of sweat fell down Yusuke`s face as his teeth ground together,

"Especially by the carelessness of stupid, macho boys."

* * *

**TRIALS OF OUR YOUTH  
But this charade is never going to last,  
So pick the poison, and pour yourself a glass.**

My head was killing me, in the most literal sense. Pounding, I had too much to drink the night before when I was hanging out with Kuwabara`s older sister, Keiko, Elise and Botan. Why did my sister let me drink so much? Why did Keiko wake me up so early?

I could hardly remember the night before, fortunately for me, I had been surrounded by girls that I felt were responsible enough to not fuck me up too much in my inebriated state. I wondered how many calories I`d carelessly consumed. I would keep things light today, I told myself, so that it balances out. So that I don`t get fat over winter break.

"Oh, dear God, what have I gotten myself into?" I stared at the crowds outside of the stadium, masses of less than average looking beings. Filthy, unrecognizable forms paired with physical features I could only imagine in the most outlandish of my nightmares. I thought demons were something that couldn`t be detected by the human eye, as Shuichi had appeared human.

I felt the anxiousness building inside my stomach, and it was clear that today was not going to be a very good day for me, mentally.

I dragged my feet as Keiko pulled me along by the wrist. I could feel the knots in my stomach growing. I didn`t like being shoved into crowds of people I didn`t know, and not only was this a crowd of unfamiliar people, but a crowd of unfamiliar people that looked like they had no regrets about scalping me and selling hair to the Americans.

On our way through the crowd, I brushed shoulders with someone, and I looked up to see vomit green and horns. I actually felt stomach acid rising up my throat, and had to swallow it back down as my body quivered in disgust. What I wouldn`t give for some hand sanitizer or Clorox wipes. I wouldn`t be able to calm down until I could just go back to the hotel and shower off.

"Keiko, I can`t do this," I shouted as we made our way to our seats, surrounded by hoards of the filthy creatures. Keiko, ballsy and still a little pissed off at me from the other day, only tightened her grip around my wrist as I whimpered like a kicked puppy.

"Keiko they _smell_," I went ignored, shoved into the seat between Shizuru and the brunette herself, Botan on the other side.

"Here you go, kid," The older Kuwabara handed me a Narlboro, and even lit the cigarette for me. Shizuru was definitely a class act, and I admired how calm she had always appeared. That and her sense of humor was similar to mine.

"Maybe that`ll help calm her down," Botan mumbled, and I looked over to see her looking at me with concern. I looked down at myself, and saw that I was shaking a little more violently than I had realized.

"Where`s the other half of the team?"

I looked down into the ring after hearing Keiko`s words, and saw that only three were present. Leaving Elise and Shuichi`s whereabouts unknown. Where did they run off to? Were they together?

"That`s unlike Hiei and Kurama," Botan observed. Hiei, there was another member missing? I was about to ask about the other team member, but decided against it, afraid of Keiko`s wrath. If I asked too many questions, she wouldn`t be able to resist shoving a few "I-told-you-that-you-should-have-come-to-see-the-m atch-yesterday"`s in my face. I didn` feel like taking any more grief. I had already burned through half of the cigarette out of nerves. I kicked myself for not bringing a pack with me. I would have to sit on my hands to keep from biting my nails off in this place.

I tried desperately to keep my eyes on the ring, where Yusuke, Kuwabara, and a third member of the team I was also unfamiliar with stood before their opponents. Unfortunately, as they were discussing the terms of the fight, I got distracted by the massive blemish staring at me from the back of another butt-ass-ugly demon`s neck.

"I can`t do this." I muffled my groan of disgust into Shizuru`s shoulder, trying my best to keep the disgusted chills at bay, wrapping myself up even tighter.

"You`re gunna miss the fight," Shizuru, unknowingly tipping Keiko off, threw me to the wolves and I yanked back into my straight, sitting position by a lock of hair thanks to Yukimura, causing me to yelp.

"Something`s not right down there," The girl to my right pointed out, and I looked back down into the ring, to see Yusuke and Kuwabara exchanging a few words.

"What do you mean?" Keiko asked, over my abnormally slouched over posture. I could hear my mother scolding me from when I was a little girl in the back of my head for slouching, but I did not feel confident enough to throw my shoulders back in that place. I wanted to disappear.

"There`s some very strong emotions buried down there in the ring, it`s hard to explain. My brother, he can sense it and… It`s getting to him."

I looked to Kuwabara, who`s posture was slouched over as well his stance almost screaming inner turmoil. His sister was right, it had been bothering him, whatever the situation was. As far as I knew, they were all just standing around and I was desperate for a distraction.

"You`re oddly emotional yourself," Botan pointed out to her, "What`s going on, then, is it something between him and Yusuke?"

Where the hell was my sister, anyway?

And Shuichi, where was he?

"No, it`s from the other team. Just imagine a desperate scream from far away—you can`t hear what it`s saying and you don`t know what`s about to happen, but you know it`s gunna be really painful."

"That does sound terrible."

"Can we do something to help?"

Meanwhile, I had positioned my head between my knees and started repeating to myself to breath in and out.

* * *

I saw Jillian flinch out of the corner of my eye as the arena rumbled with the opposing team`s first attack. She was bent over, laying her head down against her knees, hands clamped around her head as she shook. I noticed her cigarette lay on the ground, embers still glowing at the end, still burning as she hadn`t finished it. Maybe I`d been wrong to force her to come.

"Hey, Jill, it`s okay, Yusuke will win," I tried to comfort her, rubbing her back rhythmically, up and down the soft material of her sweater. Shizuru and Botan hadn`t taken their eyes off of the arena yet. I felt personally responsible for the girl when Elise wasn`t around. She acted like a little girl when she was intimidated, which wasn`t often. Still, I too was intimidated here. It wasn`t exactly something humans were used to.

Though the girl had seemed perfectly content the night before, tossing back brew-skies until she was so drunk that she could hardly stand. We had several noise complaints filed on us from her shouting and laughter.

"Elise, that`s the third time," I had looked to her younger sister after hanging up the phone, who was lying on the sofa, her legs tossed over the back as she hung, upside down, half awake. The front desk had called the previous two times to inform us that we were being much too noisy.

"She`s not my problem," Elise, who was apparently an angry drunk, didn`t even lift an eye at me as she hung like a bat. I groaned. Sometimes dealing with the Beckett siblings was as hard, if not harder, than dealing with Yusuke. I picked the phone up off the receiver in the kitchenette and cradled it against my ear as I dialed the number for the room down the hall.

"What?" Yusuke had picked up, and I was shocked to hear his voice on the other end of the line. I could feel my face flushing as I searched for the words that I needed to say, which weren`t exactly difficult to muster, but with him on the other line… We hadn`t spoken for months, and the first thing I was going to say to him was,

"Hello, Yusuke, is Kurama with you?"

"Keiko," He sounded equally as surprised, not having expected me to be there. How stupid did the boy think I could be? Honestly, he should have known better than to hide things from me. I was getting so irritated at being the one always left out for my own "good". I wished that Yusuke would look out for _his _own good sometimes.

"Er, yeah, he is," There was a pause on the other end of the line, a long pause, as if he hadn`t made the connection that he should get his teammate on the phone.

"Well, could you put him on the phone?" I asked, waiting for a response from him.

"Yeah, sorry," He mumbled, sounding strange. Something wasn`t right. Maybe it was the tournament. I pushed the thought away, telling myself that this was what he wanted. This tournament was doing something for him. He`d seemed happy, I was sure of it. I knew Yusuke, and he wasn`t the joyful type that pranced around when he was in a good mood. He was calm, determined. Something I rarely saw from him on a daily basis. I wished that our peers could know that side of Yusuke. I wished for them to see the good in him like I did.

I heard the other boy ask Yusuke who was on the phone, and then when Yusuke told him that it was me, a sigh escaped his lips as he put his mouth the receiver,

"What`d she do now?"

"She," I looked over to where Jillian was last seen, interpretive dancing with Shizuru to bad oldies songs, but they were both gone.

"She was just here…" I spoke, more to myself, but I heard the boy on the other end groan,

"I was waiting for this."

I looked over to see the door to our hotel room hadn`t been closed all the way.

"They went to some snacks," Botan called over to me as she flipped through the channels on the television. She wasn`t nearly as inebriated as Jillian or Elise, and as for Shizuru, well it was hard to tell, really.

"Botan says they`re downstairs," I turned back to the phone, but there was nothing but the dial tone coming through the ear piece.

* * *

"Oh," Jillian leaned over to the older girl at the bar, whispering low, "I wonder what _you_ taste like,"

The two erupted into a fit of giggles as Jillian ogled the older man sitting in the corner of the bar, drink in hand.

"I saw him earlier today," Shizuru said to the girl as they waited for their drinks, though more alcohol was the last thing Jill needed. They had managed to escape Keiko and her tattling just in time.

"Which one?" Jill furrowed her brow, looking back and forth between the two men at the table she was ogling. One had black hair, broad shoulders. He would have been attractive if it hadn`t been for the massive scar running down the middle of his face. The other was blonde, well groomed, with clean fingernails. That was important to her.

"The dark hair, holding the cigarette. He helped me hide from a bunch of monsters trying to pulverize me."

"I mean, if he`s your cup of tea," Jillian didn`t finish the phrase, leaning on the counter top for support. Her head felt heavy, dizzy, but she still managed to turn her nose up at the man Shizuru had been interested in. The blonde, however, was looking increasingly more attractive as the seconds rolled by.

"Oh, he definitely is," Shizuru replied, pressing the snub of her cigarette in the ash tray at the bar, a little harder than needed be. Jillian wondered if the girl was actually bitter about that, or if she was afraid to approach him.

"Girl, get over there and sit on that D." Jillian giggled between syllables, unable to say the line with a serious face, and Shizuru burst into laughter as well,

"Please, never say that again," She begged the blonde girl, who was struggling to climb off her bar stool and onto steady feet. She wobbled, but managed to support herself.

"I`ll go talk to him for you." Jillian held her hands up, winking and waving the situation off as if it were nothing at all.

"No, please don't-"

By the time Shizuru had gone to yank the girl back, she was out of reach and heading for the table in the back. The older girl groaned, hiding her face in her hands as she leaned her elbows against the counter. She prayed that she would never have to see the man in the back after Jillian, too embarrassed to watch whatever maneuver the girl was about to pull.

"Hey," Jillian approached the table with her usual, confident air that had only been fueled by the alcohol she`d consumed. The two men acknowledged her presence, but didn`t seem all too interested in her.

"I heard you helped out my friend yesterday," She spoke directly to the darker haired man, while jerking her thumb back to the bar, where Shizuru was doing her best to pretend as if that moment wasn`t really happening.

"It was nothing, really," He smiled pleasantly up at Jillian, and she was beginning to see the charm that Shizuru had seen.

Or maybe she was just wasted.

"By the way," Jillian went on, shoving her finger in the man`s face, "You`re kind of in my seat, but luckily for you, there`s one over there," She gestured to the barstool next to the elder Kuwabara, a self-satisfied grin on her face.

He chuckled, looking across the table to his colleague that Jillian was clearly interested in before pushing himself back from the table,

"Can`t argue with that," He shrugged, gesturing to the open seat for the blonde, who settled down in it, smiling wickedly at Shizuru from across the room.

It wasn`t long before the conversation she`d struck up with the blonde boy was cut short by another, that being her favorite red head. She`d actually spotted him first, as he exited the elevator in the hotel lobby outside of the room she had been in.

She excused herself from the table, growing steadily pissed off that Shuichi had already ruined a part of her night before coming into a ten foot radius of her.

"This is some bitter shit," She grumbled as she snaked her way around conversations and tables, looking for Shizuru—who was no where to be found, along with the tall, dark stranger she had sent over to her not ten minutes before. She turned around to leave the bar, but saw that she`d been spotted by irritated, green eyes.

Panicking, Jillian broke eye contact with him briefly and reached down to the table to her left, picking up someone`s full shot glass and tossing it back, ensuring herself one last buzz before the killjoy stomped all over her elevated mood.

"Shu," She forced a sticky sweet, fake ass smile as the boy approached her. He wasn`t amused by her behavior in the slightest.

"I`m not in the mood, Jillian," He grabbed hold of her arm and proceeded to lead her out of bar and across the lobby, headed for the elevator.

"What`s wrong?" She feigned concern, knowing full well that she was his problem. Did Jillian like to torture him, or was she just that drunk?

No, he knew she liked to torture him. This was no different. He ignored her for the moment, pressing the button on the elevator, waiting for the doors to open. He looked down, noticing Jillian`s bare feet against the tile floor of the lobby.

"You really need to start wearing shoes."

"Why are you always picking on me?" She pouted down at her bare feet, as if she hadn`t realized that she wasn`t wearing shoes.

Her arm fell limp in his grip, she wasn`t going to put up a fight. She`d accepted this fate many times before. Jillian knew that once Minamino had been called, she stood no chance in her drunken state.

"Because you`re hell bent on making my life very difficult." He stated, causing the girl`s mouth to snap shut, turning quiet. The elevator dinged a few times and finally opened, empty before the two stepped inside. As soon as the doors closed, Jillian burst into a loud, broken sob. Shuichi watched, slightly stunned as the girl`s hands flew to her face.

"…Why are you doing that?" There was no reply as the girl only cried harder at his insensitivity.

He couldn`t understand why she`d felt the need to cry. Perhaps it was a cop-out, a façade she`d pitched specifically to get him to let her go back to running rampant around the premises, drinking herself into an oblivion.

"You`re—such—an asshole!" She sobbed, but instead of pressing her palms flat against his chest and shoving him away, she flung her arms around his neck and began soaking his shirt with salt water. Shuichi stood, frozen and a little frightened.

"You`re acting like a child," He spoke directly into her ear, and she sniffled, leaning back from him, staring up at him with her mascara-streaked face.

She drew her hand back, and he allowed her to hit him. If that was going to make her stop crying and save him the second hand embarrassment, he was more than willing to let her land a blow right across the scars on his face that were still in the process of healing.

She stared up after she`d struck him, a new motive for crying as more tears built up in her ducts before spilling over, sending the girl into a wailing fit all over again as she sunk back against him.

"Jillian," The elevator came to a halt on her floor, doors opening to an empty hallway. He had to drag the girl with him from the elevator and down the abandoned hall.

"Please, _please_ stop."

"I—I can`t!"

"Yes, you can," He spoke from behind ground teeth, finding the room number and proceeding to pick the lock. After a few moments of fiddling while Jillian`s wailing, half-muffled by his shoulder, disturbed those residing in the rest of the rooms, he was able to force the door to open into an unlit room.

Jillian let go of him and entered her hotel room, keeping close behind as he walked through and flipped the lights on so she could see. Distracted, she began to quiet down, but her breathing remained uneven and shallow, catching here and there.

She sunk down onto her bed while the red haired boy disappeared into the bathroom, and she heard the shower start up.

He appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, looking at her silently hyperventilating on the mattress.

"I started the shower. Should I wait here in case you drown?"

"Fuck you," She growled, wiping at her face with the back of her hands. Shuichi was just relieved that the girl was no longer a ball of tears.

"No, thanks," He replied in a snide tone, seating himself in an armchair across the room, waiting for the girl to shower so that he could put her to bed, ensuring that she would not get up and wander the hotel with Shizuru for the remainder of the evening.

"Are you sure?" Jillian propped herself up on her elbows, staring at him with interest. She managed to finally catch her breath. The only signs of crying were the tinges of red atop her cheekbones.

"I`ll let you. I don`t care. You wouldn`t be the first to take me up on that offer," He didn`t know if he should be concerned or embarrassed for the girl.

"I think you care. I think you`re just putting on an act." Shuichi accused, striking another nerve. Jillian sat up, running a hand through the blonde strands of hair that had fallen in her face, steadily growing angrier the more he spoke to her,

"Tell me, how can someone struggle so hard to maintain such an unrealistic standard of cleanliness, and then have no qualms about soiling themselves with numerous sexual partners?"

"What? Just because I`m a whore, I can`t like things tidy?" She spat, standing from the bed, placing her hands on her hips.

"You`re not a whore, but for some reason, you seem to want me to think that you are. Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"Yeah, actually," The girl grinned childishly as she said this, giving up on whatever she had been aiming for.

Surprised by her honest reply, he couldn`t help but lurch his shoulders as laugher forced its way out of him in the form of a soft snort.

"The truth is, I`m just fucked up, Shu," She drew closer, inviting herself into the chair he had already been seated in. He didn't fight her as she seated herself on the arm of the chair,

"I`m just looking for some peace of mind."

"And you think that you`ll find it with me?" He asked, trying to point out how ridiculous the idea sounded out loud. Jillian only stared down at him, a sober expression appearing on her face for the first time that evening. Her lips parted, as if she were about to say something to defend the words he`d fired back at her with, but nothing came out for a long time. She only stared, eyes tracing his features in the dim lamplight.

"Yeah, maybe," She breathed, before leaning down and pressing her lips onto his.


	11. A Loss of Composer with Nothing to Say

"Where is Elise, anyway?" I tried desperately to compose myself as I stared down into the arena as the boys lunged for an extremely hideous man outside the ring, only to be intercepted by the three… opponents that were in the ring with them.

I tried to remember when the last time I saw her was. I started retracing my steps of the night before, and before I could even begin to think about Elise…

There was another issue at hand I needed to sort out. I felt my face growing hot and I covered it with my palms, everything rushing back to me.

I didn`t think I would be able to look at Shuichi in the eyes again. Not after what I`d told him. I wasn`t sure where I stood with him anymore. I tried to rack my brain for everything that had gone down. There was the bar… Shizuru had disappeared with that man.

I remembered crying, crying a lot as Shuichi drug me back to my room and tried to get me to go to sleep. We had a fight. I broke something…

_Oh_.

Oh, I needed to find my sister. I needed to talk to her, needed to tell someone that I trusted would not blab to another person about what I`d told that boy.

I got to my feet and climbed over the girls, who protested.

"Jill, hey, get back here!" Keiko stood in her seat, looking to me with concern now, "It`s not so bad after you get used to it."  
"Yeah, and the boys could use your support you know!" Botan added, giving me a look resembling a puppy dog begging for food, though no where nearly as cute.

"I`m going to find Elise," I called back to them as the crowds roared upon seeing Kuwabara being thrown across the ring. I grimaced at the sight. I was thankful it wasn`t my sister being tossed around by a bunch of monsters like a rag doll. I shook off the chill I`d received upon seeing Kuwabara`s rough landing after being thrown several feet. I needed to find Elise.

She would know what to do.

**A LOSS OF COMPOSER WITH NOTHING TO SAY  
****When the weight`s on my shoulders, I get carried away.  
****My only intention is seeing you smile.********  
**

I was in trouble now. There wasn`t a lot that I could do to get myself out of this one.

Jillian tasted like a mixed drink, orange flavored with a bitter aftertaste. Her lips lacked something they had before, the same kind of drive from back when she kissed me in front of our peers. She was relaxed, wasn`t trying to put on an act.

Which is what had me so anxious.

But Jillian couldn`t have possibly wanted this, and if she did, then I was in trouble.

I had to know.

"Jillian," I gripped her arms and pushed her away as gently as possible. The girl slid from the arm of the chair and onto my lap, curling up as if she`d been invited. I repressed the insatiable urge to roll my eyes to the ceiling as I shifted from underneath her, managing to slip out from under her and out of the chair. I straightened, and turned to look down at a rather dejected looking girl, drawing farther back into the cushions of the arm-chair where I had previously been seated. Something inside sunk when I noticed more tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

No, please, anything but another tantrum. Come _on,_ Jillian. I couldn`t understand how these fits were necessary or how they even came to be.

"I`m sorry," She looked up at me, a pained expression crossing her face. I wondered what had to have controlled her mind in that moment to cause her to be so emotionally compromised,

"I meant it, you know."

Oh, no. No, no, no.

"I think I like you, Shuichi. I really, _really_ like you. And I don`t know what to do about it. I`m sorry…"

She broke eye contact with me as her voice became smaller with every word that passed her lips. As she hung her head, I weighed my options.

She would be over it by the morning, wouldn`t she? There was always some degree of truth to these slurred confessions, though. It may not have been the alcohol speaking on her behalf. And honestly, that would have been too good to have been true. If I could believe that every obsession in Jillian`s head was only temporary, then we would have a lot less problems in general.

"I like you too, Jill," I stared down at her, putting on a friendly smile. This was, of course, not the answer she was looking for from me.

But I wouldn`t lead the girl on. I did not feel romantically for the girl at all. I didn`t think that I ever could.

Not for anyone.

"You know that isn`t what I meant," She buried her face in her hands as she slouched over, elbows sliding over her knees as she completely collapsed over herself,

"I don`t know why I even feel this way." Her words were muffled, but I managed to make them out as she continued to sniffle, breath catching here and there.

"You`ve probably had a little too much to drink, I would assume."

"Why would I embarrass myself like this if it wasn`t true?" She snapped on me, looking up at me in the dark. Even in the dim room I could see the makeup that had traveled around her eyes. I felt the sinking feeling increase inside of me as I too realized that Jillian would not lie about something like this.  
She sat back up, running a hand through her hair and flipping it to one side, letting it waterfall over one of her eyes as the other stared off into space. She looked empty, void of any feelings, while at the same time she was experiencing a chemical imbalance that could send her off the deep end if I didn`t maneuver my way around her carefully. I listened to the shower water continue to run in the background as we stayed in the room, awkward silence falling over us and filling in the spaces between Jill`s noises. It wasn`t often that I saw her crying over a boy. I didn`t think she`d ever truly occupied her thoughts with a romantic relationship before.

I guess that was why this was so threatening to me; her intent was not to make my life difficult. She did not want to wrap me around her fingers to do her bidding. Her plans for the both of us did not involve what she had made herself so infamous for at our high school. I had put my foot down with her many times, and she still wanted me.

It was all innocent. From that private moment we held back home when I turned the bulb into a flower. I still remembered the way she had smiled, her eyes filled with wonder.

I entertained the idea that maybe it would be easier to let her feelings ride for a while. If not, I would have to endure the overwhelming whirlwind emotions she cast on me. It would be easier for the both of us if I just gave her a "_chance_". Let her believe I felt something for her, allow her infatuation to subside on its own when she realized that she would want absolutely nothing to do with me long-term.

"I`m afraid that I`m not very good at communicating when it comes to emotion," I paused, trying to seem as sincere as possible. My voice calm, hands unclenched. Any sign of stress or emotion would be enough proof to her that I had been lying,

"But your feelings are reciprocated."

I heard her breath catch again, and her round eyes glinted up at me, uncertainty clouding her thoughts. It was up to her whether she wanted to believe me or not at that point.

"I don`t want your pity." She wiped at her face once more with the back of her hand.

"You should know better than that." I couldn`t help but smirk, seeing that I was much better at lying about my 'feelings' than I had given myself credit for.

"I do." She scoffed, pulling herself out of the chair. I was losing her, screwing myself into deeper shit as her thoughts spun around in her head. Swallowing whatever pride and dignity that I had left, I reached out and gripped her arm, causing her to stop short and sway on her feet. Neither one of us dared to look at each other, her out of embarrassment and fear of rejection. As for me, fear of her seeing through my plan.

"Why are you doing this?" Her voice broke, a sob catching in her trachea, silencing her as she tried to force the lump in her throat back down. I felt the guilt creeping up on me already. When had I formed a conscience when it came to Jillian, anyway?

"As much as you would like to think that I _enjoy_ your suffering, it isn`t so."

"Ha!" She sneered, yanking her arm free from my grip as she turned to me to shove her dirty look in my face, coming close enough to feel her breath as she hissed her words at me in the dark room.

"You know, I`m almost _insulted _that you would even think that I`m dumb enough to believe that for a second you could feel _anything_ for _anyone_ but yourself!"

Failing miserably at repressing the snort that was tearing through my nasal cavity, I couldn`t find a way to avoid chuckling at her choice of words. I should have known better to try to fool Jillian, queen of the trolls. I may have known a few things about deceiving others, but she had also mastered that ability. I would have to try harder, degrade myself further if I wanted her to believe me.

"So you`re calling me a liar, then?" I asked her, watching as she jut her chin out as far as she could into the air, forcing her nose up with it.

"You know you don`t feel that way about me," The smug look disappeared and she lowered her face to a proper angle, unable to keep up the act.

She did look pitiful, her full vulnerability seeming to come to the surface in her inebriated state.

"…Just tell me what I have to do to get over this."

Surely she couldn`t have harbored this infatuation for as long as she had made it sound. Jillian was easily distracted, chasing one whim to the other. A part of me knew that she had always felt a certain way about me, little movements tipping me off here and there. Her familiarity around our home, and around me over the past months. I had ignored her, turning a blind eye to whatever had built up to this moment. I ignored her because that was what I`d grown accustomed to. I pushed her out of my mind as much as I could have.

It did not surprise me that she wanted my attention more than anyone else`s at this point. And until that craving for attention was fulfilled, she would not be satisfied. She would not go off on another whim until she had ventured as far as she wanted with me.

I decided it would be best to quell that craving, let her realize how utterly boring and uneventful I could be. She would grow tired of me, as she did most everything. I would be thrown out like the last month`s edition of _Vogue_. If it would even take her a month.

Her lip quivered as she stared up at me, more tears building in the ducts, lashes becoming separated, less defined as the mascara had somewhat bled off of them over the course of the evening`s events. I remember watching her from my bedroom as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror across the hall, taking a certain, allotted time to go over the little hairs with the tiny wand, coating them with the thick, black substance. All that effort was rolling down her face, carried away on tiny droplets.

"What are you even thinking about?" Her voice hushed into a whisper, as if she didn`t really want to know the answer to her question. I felt my lips press together tightly. I couldn`t _tell _her that I wanted to lie to her and tell her that her feelings were returned.  
"That I don`t like seeing you so upset." It wasn`t a lie, I didn`t want this for her. She had her own problems, the last thing she needed was to involve herself in mine any further than she already had.

Seeing Jillian upset was oppressive. The girl had a talent for making others believe they had victimized her. She`d manipulated most people that she had a relationship with. Her sister, my mother, her friends, classmates. All were subject to these mind games. And now she had gone after me.

She had no reply to these words, as I`d stumped her. I couldn`t back out of this one now. I could see herself convincing herself of my interest in her.

I had already begun to lead her on.

"I don`t know how to stop." Was her reply, as she continued to let the tears roll down her face, acting as a solvent to her eye make-up. She needed to be distracted from her thoughts. Once I broke those up, the weight would lift off of her shoulders.

I turned her around, hands gripping each of her arms as we both stared out the window across the room. In the distance was a lighthouse, flashing as it made its round in the dark.

"Look at the light." I told her, while looking for something else to focus her attention on.

"I see it."

"Good. Now, look at the lamp." On one side of the bed sat a lamp, unlit and illuminated every four counts by the light streaming in the window by the lighthouse on the shore.

"Now, the bedpost."

"Shuichi…"

"Look at the bedpost, Jill."

"It isn`t helping!" She let out another broken sob as her arms shifted in my grip as she went to hide her face again. I froze, unsure of what move to make next.

"I need you to tell me that you don`t care about me, that you have never and will never return these feelings."

But was that what Jill needed? It seemed as if that would only make her infatuation grow stronger. I knew the girl wasn`t capable of taking care of this on her own.

I would have to endure it for her sake, for everyone`s sake. If Jillian was content, there was the a slimmer chance of her creating drama out of boredom. She was more charming when appeased anyway. If she wanted to put a label on our relationship, I wouldn`t stop her. It didn`t matter to me. As long as she was pacified, I didn`t really care.

"I do care, Jill," my hands hovered over her arms, one dropping to my left side, taking her wrist with my right. She didn`t turn to look at me.

"If you can`t be a man and say it, then you should probably just go."

She turned, heading for the bathroom. I didn`t want to leave her like that. She would be brash enough to attempt drowning herself in the bathtub. Her fingers curled around the doorknob, and I felt the pressure to stop her rise up in me,

"Jillian, wait," I crossed the floor throwing my hand out to stop the door, mid-swing.

"Go _away_, Shuichi," She raised her voice, attempting to shove me out with the door. It only took a little push to overpower the girl in her drunken state, and she bottomed out on the bathroom floor.

"Just leave me alone!" She reached for the soap dish laying on the side of the tub to her left, and didn`t hesitate to throw it at me. She hurled the soap dish into the door frame to my left and the dish shattered, sending shards of glass onto the counter and the floor before curling up and crying some more. I stood in the doorway, exhausted from dealing with her fit. Was this necessary? Surely there was another reason for her to be so upset.

I kneeled before her, reaching for her wrists as she tried to duck out of the way. I pulled her hands from her face, and as I did so, she outstretched her legs, using her feet to press against me in a poor attempt to push me away. It was almost comical at this point, and I abstained from laughing.

"Jill, please," My voice broke as I tried to stifle the chortle as she fought me off with her feet, kicking at me as she slid around on the bathroom floor with my hands around her wrists, hiding her face from me as best that she could.

"Why are you laughing?!"

"Because you think you can fight me off with your feet!" I burst into a full on laugh as it became clear that she was growing more upset, embarrassed now. She stopped fighting me, relaxing her body and bringing her knees back to her chest as she hung her head.

"Oh, Jill, don`t give me that," I stopped chortling at her expense, feeling a little sorry for her.

"Just please go away." She ground out from between her knees,

"I`m embarrassed enough as it is."

"You haven`t even given me a chance to tell you how I feel about all this." I had to speak up for her to hear me over the running water coming from the shower. I reached over and shut the faucet off. There was no point in being wasteful.

Jillian brushed her hair out of her face with her now free hand, and then reached up to place if over the collar of my shirt, smoothing it as she sniffled a little more. She had cried her eye makeup off completely at the point, the steam from the shower not helping.

"I`m sure you find it all very fucking funny." She muttered, narrowing her eyes up at me, regretting showing me her vulnerability,

"I`m sure you think I`m an idiot." She stood and I let go of her other wrist. She stepped around the broken glass of the soap dish with her bare feet, carefully wobbling on the balls of each foot. I held my breath as I watched, waiting for her to step on the glass. I had been reminded of the night I carried her home after finding her in the woods behind that party. She would never change. This was her way of life, that practiced, reckless, impulsive lifestyle. I followed her back out into the room, and saw that she had collapsed, face-down on the bed.

After picking up any visible pieces of the soap dish and tossing them into the garbage, I made my way to the girl`s bedside, seating myself next to her. I looked over to see the exposed part of the right side of her face as she stared out the window.

"You aren`t stupid. You do, however, make senseless choices."

"That`s the same thing." More tears leaked out of her eyes. Wouldn`t the well have to dry up eventually? How much could she cry?

"You`re actually very bright when you want to be." She blinked a couple more times, more tears pouring onto her pillow. She would be going nuts in the morning when she realized she had smudged more eye-makeup on the shams.

"Do you want me to be bright?" She asked, as if it were a decision I was going to make for her. As if she wanted me to control that aspect of her life.

"You already are."

"…Just not right now."

"I think you`re set on upsetting yourself, and that you refuse to move on until you`ve exhausted yourself of this current mood you`re in."

"…You`re a prick."

"Yes, you`ve mentioned that already. Several times."

She rolled onto her back and looked up at me in the dark, light from the window glinting in every four counts from the lighthouse on the shore, lighting her face.

"I don`t really mean it."

"I don`t take it personally." I winked at her, trying to ease her mood, but she only looked more pained.

"I would."

"I know." I nodded, "You`re too sensitive."

She snorted a laugh suddenly, and I smiled with her as she laid, swiping at stray water droplets rolling down her face.

"I`m so embarrassed. Oh well,"

"You didn`t do anything that out of the ordinary."

"Except profess my undying love for you." She deadpanned, annoyed at how I purposefully ignored that aspect of the evening already. I frowned.

"It`s okay, Shuichi. I can handle a little rejection. After all, I`m sure there are much more deserving candidates." She was going to make a joke out of this, I could tell. She would degrade herself and pretend like her feelings weren`t important, write herself off when she needed validation more than anything.

Which is why I needed to help her out.

"I never planned on rejecting you." Although I knew it was a lie, it came naturally to me. Years of practice. Jillian stared disbelievingly at me, disappointment as she assumed that I was doing… exactly what I was trying to do.

"Don`t play with me, okay?" She turned pathetic again, a miserable expression crossing her face.

"I`m not playing. I wouldn`t try to hurt you on purpose, Jillian," A more honest phrase fell from my mouth effortlessly, "Not if I can help it."

She was silent for a long while, just staring up at me. The corners of her lips turned upwards, but more tears streamed down her face. It was clear that even lying would not console her.

"Really?"

I nodded once, reminding myself that she would be onto something if I overrated on my part. If I were to execute a relationship with Jillian, it would have to be done as carefully as possible. The girl would be able to sense that something was off. She looked as if she was still uncertain, propping herself up on her elbows. At least she had stopped crying, though her breath was still catching from the toll it had been taking on her. She stared up at me, inches from my face as she searched my eyes with hers, wiping repeatedly at her lids to clear any more tears.

"You promise you`re not messing with me?" She sounded like a little girl. Then again, compared to me, that was precisely what she was.

"I`m not messing with you, Jill. Now, please go to sleep." I leaned over her to fluff the pillow behind her as I spoke, having become rather tired over the course of the day. I hadn`t fully healed from my last match, still a little bruised. I would need to get some sleep before the next day`s events.

"Will you stay?" She asked, laying her head back down as she awaited my answer. I watched her carefully, supposing there was no harm in it. She moved over, allowing me space on top of the comforter as I laid beside her. She fit her head in the crook of my arm, nestling in closely so that she could rest her chin against my chest as her arm wrapped around my torso.

It wasn`t so bad, laying there with Jillian in the dark on top of the covers, fully clothed. It didn`t take her long to fall asleep, her deep breaths evenly flowing in and out of her. It wasn`t the most ideal way I would have chosen to lay, but it wasn`t terribly uncomfortable, though my shoulder was pinned down underneath her.

It did not feel any different from when I was with Jillian before we decided to call this a "relationship."


	12. Over Biter

I made my way through the straggling demons clinging to the sides of the inner arena walls, still unnerved at my recollection of the night before. Was it really that embarrassing that I let my feelings slip? Had it turned out so bad?  
Elise has to be somewhere around here, I thought to myself as I headed around a corner, ducking out of the way of a rather muscular looking figure. I picked up my pace afterwards, immediately making judgment that every monster I passed was looking at me.

Yeah, that should about explain the extent of how vain I am. I smiled a little to myself as I thought about Shuichi, and how he would crap his boxer briefs if he knew I`d separated myself from the other girls.

For some reason I got off on him worrying about me, like I only mattered if he was concerned about me. I couldn`t place why it needed to be that way. It was the only way that made sense to me.

I supposed that made me an "attention whore". C`est la vie.

I guess no matter what kind of attention I was getting, as long as it was his attention, I felt a little better.

As I made my way down the stairs to a lower level of seating, I was thrown into the wall as the stadium began to violently shake. I let out a loud gasp, causing more attention to be drawn to myself as I slammed against the cement wall, knocking the side of my head in all of the commotion. I was laughed at by passing demons, sneering at the "fragile human girl" that was so easily startled.

Brushing it off and extending my middle finger in their direction, I carried myself down the stairs and made my way for the seating so that I could keep little tabs on what was going on with the boys.

Across the stadium was a massive machine, a robot, atop of which Shuichi and his other teammate, Hiei, stood

"Holy shit." I mumbled.

"Quite an impressive sight for our kind, isn`t it?"

To my right sat the man from the hotel bar that Shizuru had been interested in. I gaped down at him as he exhaled the smoke from his cigarette.

"The Dr. sent that robot after the two demons on the Urameshi team, and they hijacked it themselves." He explained, turning back to the match.

I stood, still letting the tale sink in. So that`s why the two had been absent.

That was cheap.

But where was my sister?

"Sit a while," The man patted the seat next to him on his right. He was completely at peace surrounded by demons. He held a calming ambience despite the disgusting apparitions shouting obscenities down at the ring.

"I`d better not."

He frowned as his let another cloud of smoke loose from his nostrils.

"That`s too bad. I was hoping you could tell me more about your friend."

Eyebrows furrowing, I frowned as I looked down at him.

"Move over."

The man slid farther down into the seat to his right, opening up a space on his left for me to sit. I was curious now, having assumed that Shizuru had left with the man the night before. This didn`t seem typical of men one would meet in hotel bars during a vacation.

"What are you doing in a place like this, anyway?" I grumbled as I straightened my back on the hard bench. The man chortled softly to himself before offering me a cigarette, which I graciously accepted.

"I could say the same for you." He replied, fishing for his lighter in is jacket lining. He retrieved it and held the flame up to the end of the cancer stick as I inhaled the fumes from the other end, letting the smog fill my lungs, pausing and exhaling.

"What do you want to know about Shizuru?"

Though there was plenty of tension between the teams in the ring, I couldn`t help but feel pulled in, more interested in this potential relationship than the boys that were fighting for their lives in the ring.

My priorities, I thought to myself, shaking the thought off to focus on the man on my right.

"I was hoping you could give this to her for me, actually," In his hand was a small envelope, blank, without any name addressed on it.

I wondered if the creep even knew what her name was before I`d mentioned it. Maybe she`d told him and he`d forgotten.

He slid the paper into my hand, which I looked over carefully. I even went as far as holding it up to the light to see if I could read what was inside, but of course, like every shady fella I`d ever met, he covered his tracks by wrapping the actual content of the envelope in another sheet of paper before sealing it.

"Nice try," He chuckled again, clearly humored by my suspicion. I made a point of bitchily smacking my lips together before asking,

"What the hell is a guy like you doing at this tournament anyway? Do you get off on it or are you secretly one of these freaks too?"

"I`m definitely human," He answered, his smirk never dissipating from his lips.

"So it`s like I said, you get off on it,"

"I`m the owner of the Toguro Team."

"Shut the fuck up." I groaned, rolling my eyes as I leaned back and took another puff from the cigarette he`d offered to me.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Why would you—why would _anyone _want anything to do with this shit show?"

He had turned to me now, an eyebrow raised, "May I ask what you`re doing here?"

Without missing a beat, I flicked he ash from the end of my cigarette, letting it land on the back of a demon`s scaly neck. It hissed a little, smoking but had no effect on the demon in front of me.

The monster hadn`t even noticed that I`d flicked burning embers onto the back of his neck, sizzling on his skin. I watched his flesh slowly melt a little from the heat, but he did not flinch.

"That." I gestured with the remaining half of the cigarette in my hand towards my red head, who had climbed his way off of the giant robot embedded in the stands across from us, making his way to the ring.

"How endearing," He observed, still smiling. I was beginning to become irked by that bemused sort of smile. Like he knew so much more than I did.

"Mhmm," I hummed as I took another drag. I was holding the smoke in for a brief moment when the man next to me spoke up again,

"Do you love him?"

I choked on the smoke, having swallowed it in surprise instead of letting it from my lungs. I hit my chest a few times, attempting to force it out of my throat as the man patted my back as well.

"Why—" I gasped for breath, "—would you—want-to know?!"

I inhaled sharply as my throat burned, becoming extremely irritated,

"—That`s a sick fucking question. What if I did? What—oh, that`s too bad, because your team is going to pulverize him, right?"

He erupted with laughter now at my outburst, slapping one of his knees,

"Not at all! No," He laughed,

"Oh, hey, by the _way,"_ I went on, jabbing a finger down at the ring, pointing to Kuwabara, who stood at Yusuke`s side, battered from refusing to fight the opposing members of the Dr. Ichigaki team.

"That boy down there is Shizuru`s kid brother, and when I tell her that you`re a filthy pig, she`ll never bat an eye at you again."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, the three on the opposing team attacked Kuwabara simultaneously, sending him flying across the ring onto his back, bloodied and lying still. Hands clamped over my mouth, and I realized that I hadn`t remembered getting to my feet, or even letting out the scream that was echoing around us for a moment after escaping my lips.

I felt a hand grip around my arm, and looked down to see the man with a grave expression now. Members of the audience surrounding us were staring at the commotion I was making. I stared back at unfamiliar, inhuman faces, not sure of anything to feel but rage. I narrowed my eyes down at the man again,

"You think that`s amusing!" I pulled my arm from his grasp, spitting as I pronounced my words sharply, articulating every consonant as I hissed,

"My sister is on that team!"

I reached out and gripped the front of the man`s shirt, dragging him upwards from his place,

"How could you just sit back and play God, betting against the lives of others, having a say in who fights who to the death?"

Before I could say any more, an even larger hand yanked me backwards, causing me to release the man and turn to the new offender that hand curled his massive fingers around my shoulder, pressing painfully into my collarbone. I let out a grunt as his grip tightened, threatening to break my neck.

"Is there a problem, Sakyou?"

* * *

**OVER BITER**  
**Their gnashing teeth and criminal tongues conspire against the odds,**  
**But they haven`t seen the best of us yet.**

* * *

The man, Sakyou, straightened himself, adjusting his collar and smoothing the wrinkles as his face returned to it`s nonchalant expression.

I twisted in his grip to look up at him. Tall, tan, and with an incredibly muscular build, his face looked as if he`d run full tilt into a brick wall. It was wrinkled, as if he were permanently smelling a fart.

But what pissed me off more than anything was that he was wearing sunglasses on an overcast day.

"No, this is a relative of one of the members of the Urameshi Team."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance." He gave my shoulder another tight squeeze before releasing me, letting the blood return to my shoulder and throb with pain. I could already feel the bruise forming.

"Sun always shines when you`re cool, right, asshole?" I spat, referring to his unflattering shades.

"_Jillian_!"

Elise, usually soft spoken and monotonous in her phrasing, had shown more emotion in those three syllables of my name than I had possibly ever heard from her.  
I heard fear in her voice as her shrill cry echoed three octaves higher than I was used to hearing, causing a little confusion on my part as I turned to look at the blonde, who was glaring down at me from a few steps behind us.

I turned back to this 'Sakyou', staring between him and his massive bodyguard-slash-possible-lover.

I had half the mind to tell Shizuru her crush was a homosexual.

I flicked the rest of my cigarette to the dirty cement, grinding it out under the toe of my pumps.

"Jill!" Elise called again, and I turned sharply on that same toe, pivoting enough to shout at her to hold on three god damn seconds while I finished up my business with the two.

"Enjoy the time you have with your sister. It may be the last you see of her."

Elise called for me again as the skin around my teeth pulled back, ready to fire back at him. Slowly, I folded the envelope Sakyou had given me in half and into my back pocket.

I grit my teeth together as I turned away, marching back up the stairs towards the petite blonde waiting for me.

Her slender, pale fingers wrapped around my wrist and she yanked me back into the dark, empty hallway behind the stadium seating.

"Jeeze, Elise, you know I bruise easy," I yipped as I felt her literally pull me along so hard that my arm was about ready to pop out of its socket.

"You would have been more than just bruised if I`d let you sit there and throw insults at one of the Toguro brothers." She didn`t turn to speak to me, just kept moving forward as she pulled me along the halls.

I was beginning to compare the inside of the stadium to one of those maze`s made of hedges.

"Do you have to fight that loser?"

There were exits on both sides of the halls but to which part of the stadium I wasn`t sure they lead. Sometimes we went up ramps, and down, dodging into other halls.

"Yeah, so please don`t piss him off anymore than you have to."

There was a lot of commotion coming from the ring, and there were few stray demons lying in wait.

"He was so butt ugly."

"Jill."

"He was."

I heard her chuckle lightly, finally. At least I could still make my own little sister laugh despite this whole shit storm we`d been shoved into.

"I need to tell you something," I continued, "After Shizuru and I left last night, Shuichi—"

"Elise!"

We came to an abrupt halt and I ran into Elise`s back as we turned to a figure standing in one of the frames. He was tall, slim, and rather delicate looking in his features.

Oh, yeah, and there was a fucking binky stuffed in his mouth. I watched in disgust as Elise stepped forward and acknowledged the man,

"Yusuke and Kuwabara are getting pulverized," She sounded stressed, and I realized that her attachment to the boys was much stronger than I`d believed it to be. I`d been ignorant to my sister`s life outside of mine for so long. I felt guilty, almost as if I`d neglected her.

"Actually, now Kurama`s getting pulverized," He turned and looked over his shoulder, speaking in his obnoxiously feminine voice,

"I`m sure you don`t want to miss out on that,"

Without hesitation, she followed him down another hall. I leaned closer to her as we followed the man, questions pooling up behind my tongue,

"Is he a pedophile?" I asked, choking back a snort at my own question. He honestly looked like a child molester. He was dressed robes and had the letters "Jr" written on his forehead beneath his brunette dyke spike.

"No! Jill," Elise`s face turned bitter, features twisting in the shadows.

"I`m just asking."

We followed this man into a suite overlooking the stadium, out onto the battlefield that held my red head and some clown with paintbrushes.

Only my red head was moving much slower than his opponent, as if he`d injured his leg where the paint had looped an infinity circle around the hem of his pants.

"Gama has cast a spell on Kurama! Kurama is in a critical situation!" The announcer`s voice echoed throughout the private via a speaker in the top right corner of the window.

I felt the hair stand on my neck at the words.

"I`d better get down there," Elise breathed, her tone taking on its usual seriousness,

"Everyone but Yusuke is incapacitated, no doubt he and Kurama would attempt taking them all on themselves." She observed, drawing back from the glass window. The man on her right looked down at her, eyes tracing over her profile cautiously,

"I`ll walk you down. I need to speak with you."

I saw her freeze, and something about the way her shoulders had lurched slightly forward told me that she had not counted on him bringing whatever she was avoiding to light.

"Wait here, Jillian," Elise turned to give me a stern look, her wide blue eyes almost lacked the capacity for the old soul lying behind them.

She looked much more naïve than she truly was. I had always told her she would get frown lines if she kept it up.

I kept my face to the arena as the two shut the door behind them, watching as Gama flung paint across Shuichi`s wrists, locking him down where he was standing, arms pinned to his sides.

I found myself pressing my palms against the glass as Gama lunged for the kill, silently pleading that he had a trick up his sleeve. Shuichi was always prepared for anything.

Surely he would move at the last moment, leaving me to hold my breath.

And like clockwork, my prayers were answered and the offending demon was sliced into several pieces by a vine protruding from Shuichi`s hair, coiling around it, forming a ponytail.

I cringed at the unpleasantness of it all. I was relieved that he`d managed to get out of that one.

But the unsettling feeling in my stomach was telling me that he could easily do the same to me if I pressed one too many buttons.

I wondered if he had ever thought about chopping me to bits.

His eyes had turned viciously precise as he stared at his opponent—and though he did not show a sliver of pleasure in the act of mutilating Gama, he also showed no remorse.

It dawned on me that he was as cold as he`d let on. I`d figured it all an act, his own form of humor.

He was cold-blooded.

And like every girl in history to cross paths with the typical "bad boy", I was determined to change him, if for my sake only.

I shuddered as I watched Gama try to attack the boy once more, stumbling from the pain of the previous attack. Shuichi was shouting at him, cross now as the injured demon slung his blood all over him despite the way he barked protests.

I noticed the markings he had placed on him seemed very specific, as if he was really painting his blood with a purpose.

But he was already dying, what more could he do?

I watched as Shuichi`s look of frustration melted into one of distress as he looked down at the markings for himself. Gama collapsed to the ground, shaking with laughter.

Something bad was about to happen, and I was stuck with my face pressed to the glass, watching.

A hooded figure stepped into the ring, the next opponent—though it seemed that Shuichi was still stuck in his place.

When they discarded the cloak, I was relieved to see that his new opponent was rather on the petite side, taking frosted tips to a completely new level with light blue hair, aquamarine tips. I had to narrow my eyes to get a better look at his frosty tipped eyebrows. Oh good Lord, I thought to myself, he`s wearing fish net sleeves how disgusting. I was snorting to myself with the same petty sniggering that I found so hard to repress when passing judgment on my peers.

"Touya, the Master of Ice!"

Words were exchanged between the two, though all was inaudible from the box I was in—several yards up into the stands. I felt his presence, sending a wave of chills throughout the stadium. Frost formed on the window pane I had been pressed against. I backed up quickly, put off as I stared at the small ice crystals that were reaching upwards, as if trying to consume me from the other side of the glass. I watched as my breath formed in a cloud before me as I began to feel the chills run from the tips of my fingers to the tops of my shoulders, goose bumps forming, draining all color from my skin. I had regret leaving my pea coat at the hotel, too excited for the unusually pleasant December weather.

I wrapped the cardigan I`d been wearing around my body tightly, crossing my arms over my chest to keep it tucked around me tightly as I watched Touya`s hands illuminate.

Pieces of ice formed in his right palm, which he brought up to his lips and smiled slightly before releasing a breath into them, sending them flying towards the boy that remained pinned to the ground where he had stood for what had already seemed to be an hour.

I cringed as he attempted a dodge in almost slow motion. There was no way this was going to work.

Shuichi, despite the disadvantage, managed to avoid several blows thanks to some very skilled acrobatics, a talent I was unaware he possessed.

But it wasn`t enough that he was skilled and flexible, the weight on his limbs was taking a great physical toll on him.

I could see his exhausted from so far up.

I glanced back nervously at the door, and back down to the ring. Elise had not made it down yet, and was therefore distracted, and distracting the strange man.

I ducked out before giving it a second thought.

* * *

"Second victory for Kurama!"

Relief flooded over Yusuke as he watched with concern as his team member stood, vines protruding from his limbs and tangled around him. Kurama had used his own attack on himself in order to defeat his opponent, thus causing damage to himself in the process. There had been no other way to defend himself with his abilities still sealed from his previous match.

Touya fell to the arena floor, crouched over as he held his wounds.

"That`s enough, Kurama!" Yusuke called to him, "I`ll take it from here!"

But the demon comrade stood, speaking to the ice demon that had been counted out moments before, his lips moving as he blinked wearily, eyelids looking heavy.

Yusuke`s voice echoed through the stadium as Kurama`s arms fell limp to his sides, the three syllables of the demon`s name held by a tone of desperation.

"This can`t be true," Yusuke snarled, anger and denial showing through—his first step in the grieving process.

The referee, Koto, stepped closer, observing Kurama`s still-standing form, gasping as she lifted the microphone to her mouth,

"Yes! He`s still alive—he`s badly hurt but still standing!"

"What?!" Again Yusuke`s voice projected over the taunting of the audience members, a sound of relieved disbelief before he grinned to himself, fired up to take another match of his own,

"Okay, it`s my turn now! I`ll take the others!"

Another member of the Demonic Team stepped forward despite the demon still standing in the ring, smugly determined to spite Yusuke,

"That`s impossible," The burly, shirtless demon spoke, "You can see for yourself that he`s still standing. I`ll deal with him."

"Hey moron, I`m replacing him!" Yusuke barked at the oaf now standing before his unconscious teammate, "He isn`t fit to fight!"

"You can replace him!" Koto, who was starting to feel sympathetic towards the Urameshi team, seemed to be slightly panicked and intimidated by the new opponent. There were howls of protest from the crowd, desperate to see more bloodshed, despite how unjust the circumstances.

But the be all-end all was voiced loud and clear over the speakers lining the walls of the stadium, a soothing voice echoing over the commotion in favor to please the crowd of bloodthirsty monsters.

"An order from the management! The replace player is refused!"

Koto, hesitant as she had no other choice but to follow the rules, lifted the microphone back up to her lips as she looked down at the boy on the side of the ring quivering in rage,

"Kurama verses Bakuken,"

Yusuke`s eyes darted from Koto to the beast towering over his friend, thick eyebrows knit tightly in anger.

"….Begin!"

Bakuken sneered at Koto`s pity, lifting her by the back of her shirt,

"You`re a bad judge," He ground out before tossing the referee back several feet, skidding to a halt on the edge of the ring, clearly perturbed.

Bakuken then proceeded to pull back one muscular arm, puffing his chest out before swinging his fist and striking Kurama in the face. The unconscious demon rolled across the ring, similar to a tumble weed across the vast desert.

Yusuke`s teeth could have broken off from how tightly ground they`d been. Bakuken, oblivious to the rage building from Yusuke on the side of the arena, only snickered in amusement.

The burly demon pursued Kurama`s collapsed body, Koto calling after him to halt,

"Bakuken, back off! Kurama`s on the ground, I have to do the ten count!" She quickly went into the count, trying to reach ten before Bakuken reached down to pick Kurama back up, dangling his feet just barely above the arena tiles.

"He`s not on the ground anymore," He chuckled, "See? The show continues…"

As drops of sweat rolled down Yusuke`s face, the boy unable to sit back and watch a loyal friend and comrade used as a punching bag without any ability to defend himself.

His knuckles cracked at his side as he curled his hand into a fist before extending his index finger, ready to lift his arm and fire upon will. But a distraction made its way into his tunnel vision before he could fire.

Silvery-blond hair glinted as it caught the light as a female figure pulled itself up into the ring with Bakuken and Kurama.

"What the hell does she think she`s doing?!"

He watched, baffled as Elise pulled herself into the ring, making her way for the two.

"Elise!" Yusuke shouted, blood vessels threatening to pop as the skin along his jaw tightened over stiff bone structure. He did not condemn her, looking down at his left hand clasped over the wrist of his right, how could he? His index finger illuminated, flickering energy like a candle flame. He had been ready to fire long before Elise had decided to take matters into her own hands. She did not fear the tournament owners or their impromptu rules.

Her back to him, she ignored his call to her, taking long, tall and confident strides toward Bakuken. The weight of the consequences didn`t exist, though she had to know there would be a penalty. Elise wasn`t that ignorant.

Still, something about that posture wasn`t right. Elise never stood with her shoulders thrown back. She had a slouched look, despite her independent mannerisms.

"It seems as if another member from Team Urameshi has entered the ring!" Koto`s voice called out over the loudspeaker, prompting the crowds to jeer even more.

"Hey!" The girl`s snarl could be heard with ease despite all the surrounding noise, her voice projecting over the low hiss surrounding them.

"Were you dropped on your head as an infant?!" The crowds silenced in order to hear the human girl who dared insult another of their kind.

In that moment, Yusuke had put together in his head that the girl standing in the ring was not Elise.

"He`s not even awake to feel the blows! Why don`t you just fuck off already?!" Her voice was tearing, the quality of the tone blurring around the edges as the level of volume she was speaking at became too much for her vocal chords to physically handle.

Bakuken laughed at her, clearly amused by the situation at hand. He didn`t hesitate to yank Jillian off the ground by her arm and chuck her across the arena, causing Yusuke to cringe as she landed on her arm hard enough for the snapping of her bones to be heard throughout the stadium. Her screams were just as gruesome.

Though in pain, the defenseless human girl crawled back to her feet, holding her limp and slightly misshapen arm at her side as she repressed the tears forming in her eyes,

"Hey asshole!"

Bakuken, who had turned his attention back to kicking the snot out of the unconscious teammate turned, holding the red-head by the collar as he looked to Jillian,

"You don`t know when to quit do you, girl?" He asked, slightly annoyed that she had kept on interrupting him from his previous shit show.

"Put him down!" She screeched from across the ring, "Or I`ll show you real pain!"

Oh no, Jill, Yusuke felt his mouth drop to the ground. She`d actually went as far as to threaten him. Everyone knew Jillian had no true power to speak of, and now she was going to try and bluff her way through it?

Yusuke bit down on his tongue, debating whether he should enter the ring and pull her back. If he were to call her bluff, who knows how the owners would react. Jillian wasn`t a complete idiot, she knew that they assumed her as her sister. It was only right to assume that Jillian would put up a fight.

The boy felt his stomach churn, knotting the insides together as he watched Jillian literally talk the demon into killing her.

Bakuken laughed, grinning, as he probably couldn`t sense any threat from the girl either.

"HEY GET DOWN FROM THERE," Yusuke, forced to do nothing but try to persuade the girl back to safety, "YOU WANNA DIE, MORON?"

Jillian, who had looked somewhere in the stands with a wry smile spreading across her face, turned her attention over towards him.

Her cocky grin spread farther as she continued,

"Going once, fat ass," She called back over to Bakuken, who was now snarling back at her. He stood with his feet planted,

"And how do you plan on doing that? You reek of fear." He jerked Kurama around like a rag doll as he spoke.

"Put him down," Jillian then raised her right hand and pointed her index finger out at him, the remaining three fingers curling into her palm as she held her thumb cocked-like a pistol.

"You have _got_ to be _kidding me_!" Yusuke screamed from beside the arena, feeling the angry blood pulsing through his veins as he watched her,

"HEY ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?! YOU KNOW THAT`S NOT GUNNA WORK, _RIGHT_?!"

Her cocky grin was only fueling his fire. This crazy ass girl really thought it was as easy as pointing her finger and calling out 'spirit gun'?

"Going twice," She warned again.

"You have no energy with which to speak!" Bakuken let out an irritated laugh, trying his best to intimidate the girl who should have been running with her tail between her legs.

"Why don`t you quit talkin' slick and see for yourself, asshole?!" Was her reply.

Fed up, Bakuken charged at her, Kurama in his left hand and a fist with Jillian`s name on it in the other. Jillian was obviously frozen in fear, her arm remained outstretched towards the demon charging her. Yusuke held his breath, holding his hand in position as well.

Within the final moments of that demon closing in on her, the inconceivable managed to happen. Jillian, a girl with no reserve of spirit energy, managed to fire a rei gun.

But the shot didn`t fire directly from her finger. Yusuke narrowed his eyes, as he hadn`t expected it to fire at all, seeing that the blast of energy came from almost behind her, as if she had summoned it from another area. The light came into contact with Bakuken, sending him back into a far wall of the arena, cement walls crumbling around him. Jillian stood back, her legs shaking violently as she sighed with relief. She had managed to pull another ridiculous ace from her sleeve.

The girl chuckled darkly as Koto nervously began the ten count.

Her eyes drifted to Kurama, who was still out of sorts and lying on the arena floor, completely wrecked. She slunk to her knees, clutching her injured arm to her body as she watched him with tears welling in her eyes.

Her her lips moved in the familiar looking three syllables that spelled his human alias's name.

The aura was still clinging to the air like static, lingering over Yusuke`s head. There was a familiarity in it, though he couldn`t place it immediately, it eventually hit.

That energy had not belonged to Jillian. In fact, it felt nothing like Jillian in the slightest.

Of course, before he was able to place the aura, the committee chimed in over the loudspeakers, sending out more unwanted rules they`d created on the spot.

"Due to the defiance of the Urameshi Team, the next match will be fought to the death between the insubordinate alternate and the remaining member of Team Urameshi."


End file.
